The following biographical sketch is adapted from
the "News of the Church: Elder Glen L. Rudd of the First Quorum of the
Seventy" published in the Ensign for May 1987 on the occasion
of Elder Rudd's call to the First Quorum of the Seventy.
Glen Rudd’s first two sons are named Lee and Matthew—after
President Harold B. Lee and Elder Matthew
Cowley. Both men had a great influence in Brother Rudd’s life. As a
young missionary in New Zealand, Elder Rudd served as secretary to Elder
Cowley, his mission president. He grew up in the Pioneer Stake, while Brother
Lee was developing the Pioneer Stake’s welfare program. It was there that
he learned welfare principles. Later, as a bishop, he presided over a large
ward with many
welfare needs. All this prepared him for full-time service in the Church
Welfare Program.
Glen Larkin Rudd, was born 18 May
1918 in Salt Lake City to Charles P. and Gladys Marie Harman Rudd. Young
Glen worked during his teenage years in his father’s poultry processing
business, attended the University of Utah,
served a mission in New Zealand, and then returned home to start a
poultry business of his own. It was soon thriving.
He married the former Marva Sperry. Elder Lee performed
their marriage and promised them that they would have a large family. And,
although Sister Rudd suffered from heart problems, the couple eventually
had the family that had been promised
them—eight children in all.
During the early years of his marriage, Elder Rudd
served as a ward clerk, a counselor in the bishopric, and a bishop. As
a young deacon, “I had an idea that someday I would be a bishop—when I
got to be fifty,” he says. But that responsibility came
earlier than he had anticipated—“by the time I was halfway to fifty.”
For more than thirty years, he worked in the development
of the welfare program. His first assignment was to help work out details
of how storehouses should be run. Later, he helped design, build, and establish
storehouses in many parts of the United States.
Elder Rudd managed his own business for twelve years—until
one day when Elder Lee asked him if he would manage Welfare Square. “He
made me a promise,” says Elder Rudd. “He said, ‘If you’ll come and be the
manager of Welfare Square, you’ll never regret it.’ That was one of the
great promises of my life—I have never regretted it.”
Elder Rudd took the job the next day and gave up
his business. He traveled throughout the Church with General Authorities
teaching in stake conferences about the welfare program. He gained a great
testimony of the principle of work. “All my life, when I’ve found people
in trouble, people who are sad, people who need counseling or advice, I
have found that work is generally the answer to their problems,” he says.
Brother Rudd presided over the Florida Mission from
1966 to 1969. In 1970, he was called as a regional representative.
Released in 1976 from that calling, and after twenty-five
years as manager of Welfare Square, he accepted a new assignment as zone
director for the Welfare Services Department. He was also called as a counselor
in the Salt Lake Wilford Stake presidency, where he served for nine years.
In 1978, he served as a mission president for a four month period in New
Zealand when the president of the Wellington Mission passed away. Then,
in 1984, he retired from Church employment and was called back to New Zealand—this
time to be the president of the temple.
In all his Church assignments—welfare work, temple
work, and missionary work, Elder Rudd has felt the Spirit of the Lord.
“I just know the Church is true,” he says. “There has never been a time
when I haven’t known it was true. The testimony I have
comes from the whisperings of the Spirit. If we can listen to the Spirit
of the Lord, we can know the direction to go.”
Elder Rudd served but two years of his five year call
in the First Quorum of Seventy before being called to the newly created
Second Quorum of the Seventy. He faithfully filled the remainder of his
call in the Second Quorum and was honorably released on October 3, 1992.
