Dallin H. Oaks

Dallin Harris Oaks (born August 12, 1932) is an American religious leader and former jurist and academic who since 2018 has been the first counselor in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).

Dallin Oaks was born on August 12, 1932, in Provo, Utah, to Stella (née Harris) and Lloyd E. Oaks.

Through his mother, he is a 2nd great grandnephew of one of the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon, Martin Harris.

He was given the name Dallin in honor of Utah artist Cyrus Dallin.

His mother was the artist's model for The Pioneer Mother, a public statue in Springville, Utah.

She was present for the unveiling of the statue less than three weeks before Dallin Oaks was born.

Oaks was injured in a car accident that threw him from the car when he was nine months old, which was reported in both the Provo and Vernal newspapers.

When Oaks was two years old, his father moved the family from Provo to Twin Falls, Idaho, where they would live until Oaks was eight.

Oaks began his schooling at Washington School in Twin Falls.

His father died of tuberculosis in 1940.

After the death of her husband, Stella Oaks suffered an episode of mental illness and was unable to attend school and work for a time.

During this time, Oaks and his two younger siblings resided with their maternal grandparents in Payson, Utah.

The loss of his father and the temporary loss of his mother caused him to have difficulties concentrating in school.

When he was about nine or ten years old, he resumed living with his mother, who had taken a position as a teacher in Vernal, Utah.

Both of his parents were graduates of BYU.

After his father died, his mother pursued a graduate degree at Columbia University and later served as head of adult education for the Provo School District.

He had obtained his first-class radio operator license in the spring of 1948.

During his first two years of high school Oaks attended Uintah High School in Vernal, where he was on the football team, involved in debate, and played the oboe in the school band.

Oaks graduated from B Y High in 1950.

Oaks was involved in Boy Scouts and earned the rank of Eagle Scout at age 14.

After high school, Oaks attended BYU, where he occasionally served as a radio announcer at high school basketball games.

At one of these basketball games during his freshman year at BYU, he met June Dixon, a senior at the high school, whom he married during his junior year at BYU.

Due to his membership in the Utah National Guard and the possibility of being called up to serve in the Korean War, Oaks did not serve as an LDS Church missionary.

In 1956, she became the first woman to sit on the Provo City Council, where she served for two terms.

He studied accounting at Brigham Young University (BYU), then went to law school at the University of Chicago, where he was editor-in-chief of the University of Chicago Law Review and graduated in 1957 with a J.D. cum laude.

In 1958, she also briefly served as Provo's assistant mayor.

From about age 10 to 16 Oaks and his younger brother and sister spent the school year in Vernal, Utah, and the summer in Payson, Utah, with his maternal grandparents while his mother pursued her graduate degree at Columbia.

During these years his mother was a high school teacher in Vernal.

Oaks obtained his first job at the age of twelve at a radio repair shop in Vernal sweeping the floors.

He later worked as an engineer and announcer for stations in both Vernal (KJAM) and Provo (KCSU).

Oaks was a law clerk for Chief Justice Earl Warren of the U.S. Supreme Court, then spent three years in private practice at Kirkland & Ellis before returning to the University of Chicago as a professor of law in 1961.

He taught at Chicago until 1971, when he was chosen to succeed Ernest L. Wilkinson as the president of BYU.

Oaks was BYU's president from 1971 until 1980.

During his professional career, Oaks was twice considered by the U.S. president for nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court: first in 1975 by Gerald Ford, who ultimately nominated John Paul Stevens, and again in 1981 by Ronald Reagan, who ultimately nominated Sandra Day O'Connor.

He was called as a member of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1984.

Currently, he is the second most senior apostle by years of service and is the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Oaks was born and raised in Provo, Utah.

Oaks was then appointed to the Utah Supreme Court, serving until his selection to the LDS Church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1984.

At the start of his 11th-grade year, the Oaks family moved to Provo, where he chose to attend Brigham Young High School (B Y High) because it was smaller than Provo High School.

At B Y High, he was again involved in football, track, playing the oboe in the band, and dramatic productions.