This biographical sketch is adapted from the "News
of the Church: Elder Cecil O. Samuelson, Jr. of the Seventy" published
in the Ensign for November 1994 on the occasion of Elder Samuelson's call
to the First Quorum of the Seventy.
As he adjusts to his new calling as a member of the
First Quorum of the Seventy, Elder Cecil O. Samuelson, Jr., is sustained
by two major influences in his life: his wife and his testimony.
“I’ve known the gospel is true all my life,” he says,
pausing from cleaning out his desk at Intermountain Health Care, where
he was a senior vice president. “While in the military, I prayed for a
confirmation about the Prophet Joseph and the Book of
Mormon. I received an impression as vivid as a sound or picture: Why
do you pray for an answer to something you already know is true?”
Of his wife, the former Sharon Giauque, whom he married
in the Salt Lake Temple on 25 November 1964, Elder Samuelson says: “My
wife is my best and most honest critic. She has always embraced any call
that has come our way. Her support of me is absolute.”
Born 1 August 1941 and raised in Salt Lake City,
Elder Samuelson interrupted his studies at the University of Utah to serve
a mission to Scotland. After earning a master’s degree in educational psychology
and a medical degree, he completed his
internship and residency at Duke University in North Carolina. He spent
the next seventeen years practicing rheumatology and serving on the University
of Utah medical faculty, including working as the university’s vice president
for health sciences and dean of the school of medicine. Four years ago, he
accepted his position at IHC.
Elder Samuelson’s Church experience has included
serving as elders quorum president, high councilor, and president of a
University of Utah stake from 1977 to 1982. More recently, he has served
as a regional representative. At the time of his call
to the Seventy, he was serving as high priests group leader in the
Holladay Eighteenth Ward, Salt Lake Holladay South Stake.
An avid reader, Elder Samuelson favors history and
current events. With his wife and their five children, who range in age
from twelve to twenty-six, he enjoys boating on Lake Powell and watching
sporting events. He plays a little tennis and has grown to love walks of
solitude.
Of his work experience, Elder Samuelson says, “Medicine
is fundamentally a mission of service, and service is what Jesus wants
us all to be doing. I’m more and more convinced that everything good we
do in life is somehow connected to the gospel.”
In June of 2001, Elder Samuelson was called into the
Presidency of the Seventy. This call was to last but two years when in
2003 he was released from the Presidency and appointed President of Brigham
Young University, succeeding Merrill J. Bateman
in that position. Elder Samuelson continued to serve in the First Quorum
of the Seventy until 2011, while Elder Bateman was called into the Presidency
of the Seventy. In essence the two switched positions.
