The following biographical sketch is adapted from the "News of the
Church: Elder Graham W. Doxey of the Seventy" published in the Ensign for
May 1991 on the occasion of Elder Doxey's call to the Second Quorum of
the Seventy.
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Graham W. Doxey’s grandfather joined the Church in England
and migrated to Utah. Alone for most of his growing-up years, he determined
to make his family a top priority. Two generations later, Elder Doxey has
inherited that determination.
“Family is really the only association that is eternal,”
explains Elder Doxey, newly called to the Second Quorum of the Seventy.
“Other relationships in life come and go, so why not concentrate on the
one unit that is going to endure?”
That commitment to family is shared by Elder Doxey’s
wife, Mary Lou Young Doxey, whose lifelong dream to have a dozen children
was fulfilled in 1974 when Mary Kim was born. At the time, Brother Doxey
was taking a three-year break from working in the real estate management
firm he owns with his two brothers to serve as mission president in the
Missouri Independence Mission.
Besides Mary, the others of the Doxey dozen are Diane
(Jones), Carol (Richards), Marilee (Page), Graham, Robert, Lisa (Patch),
Scott, Meg (Boud), Amy, who died as an infant, Becky (Schettler), and Sarah.
The Doxeys have always enjoyed traveling together
and look back on their three years in Missouri as wonderful bonding years.
Recently, adult members of the family have also enjoyed three-day “family
conferences.”
“If it’s good for the Church to have conferences,
it ought to be good for us,” Elder Doxey says. The Doxey conferences have
convened in Missouri, Illinois, and Utah.
But those conferences are only an extension of a
tradition begun years ago. Sunday afternoons were often devoted to family
teaching sessions when Brother Doxey would gather the children around the
dinner table or on a blanket outside under the trees.
“He would teach them, using the scriptures or a story,
about an eternal principle or perspective,” recalls Sister Doxey. “His
great love is teaching the children to appreciate the gospel and the world
around them.”
Elder Doxey learned to appreciate those things while
growing up in Salt Lake City. Born 30 March 1927, Graham was the second
child of Graham H. and Leone Watson Doxey. When Graham was sixteen, the
Doxey family moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where his father served as
mission president. After graduating from high school and spending a year
at the University of Louisville and an eighteen-month stint in the navy,
Graham returned to Salt Lake City.
On his first Sunday home, he noticed his future wife.
Although they had grown up in the same ward, she was three years younger
than he was. “I’d never paid attention to her before,” Elder Doxey notes.
The two went on only a few dates before Graham left to serve in the Central
Atlantic States Mission.
However, during the next two years, the couple corresponded
frequently. They were married in the Salt Lake Temple on 22 June 1950 and
settled in the Salt Lake Valley.
It was on his mission that Brother Doxey first read
the Book of Mormon completely. “I’ll never forget how I felt as I was sitting
up in bed reading one night,” he recalls. “I wasn’t anywhere near Moroni’s
promise in my reading, but its truthfulness settled over me like a blanket.
I tingled with the excitement.
“When I came home from my mission, I knew the gospel
was true because I thought I could prove it through the scriptures,” he
continues. “But after a while, the gospel wasn’t only true because of the
scriptures; it was true because I could see it working in the lives of
people.”
Service in the Church has been a big part of Elder
Doxey’s life. In addition to being a mission president, he has served as
a bishop, a stake president, a temple sealer, and a counselor in the Young
Men General Presidency.
“Every opportunity to serve in the Church just helps
you refine your testimony. I know the Lord lives, and it will be a wonderful
thrill to bear that testimony to people of the world,” he says.
“This new opportunity is overwhelming and humbling,
but I keep thinking of newborn lambs or foals trying to get their feet
under them. I’m trying to get my feet under me. But I’ll do it and give
the Lord all that I have.”
Elder Doxey fulfilled his five-year call to the Second
Quorum of the Seventy and was honorably released with a vote of thanks by a grateful Church on October 5, 1996.
