“BYU Law Library Dedicated,” Ensign, June 1997, 74
BYU Law Library Dedicated
All three members of the First Presidency spoke at the dedication of Brigham Young University’s Howard W. Hunter Law Library on 21 March.
“What a great soul he was,” said President Gordon B. Hinckley of President Hunter. “A student, yes. A scholar, yes. A hard worker, yes. But above all, a man of great kindness and love and respect and care and thoughtfulness and consideration. It was not his brilliance in law that came through as you knew him. It was his love for humanity which made the big difference in his life.”
President Hinckley attended the ceremony with his wife, Marjorie. Also in attendance were President Thomas S. Monson, First Counselor in the First Presidency, and his wife, Frances; President James E. Faust, Second Counselor in the First Presidency; several other General Authorities; President Hunter’s widow, Inis Hunter; donors to the project; and law school faculty, staff, and students.
In his remarks, President Monson observed that as generations attend the law school, they will reflect on the man for whom the library was named. He spoke of several of President Hunter’s strengths—humility, deliberateness, love, loyalty—and concluded by asking all who enter the library to “carry the virtues of Howard W. Hunter.”
President Faust spoke of the library as a fitting tribute to a great man. “With this Howard W. Hunter Law Library, which houses thousands and thousands of books explaining the laws of man, I hope that there will be a compensatory study of the laws of God.”
The new library is a 60,000-square-foot addition to the older 40,000-square-foot library of the J. Reuben Clark Law School at BYU. The facility houses more than 400,000 volumes and volume equivalents and is designed to handle more than 20 years of growth. One of the largest law libraries in the United States, it has 476 student carrels, 24 study rooms, and three computer labs.