I met Brother England during the summer of 1981 while a student at BYU. I had written my first play—a drama called Digger concerning young Joseph Smith, his involvement in money-digging, his 1825 trial and his courtship of Emma Hale. Controversial stuff—supposedly. But other students in the theater department loved my script. My writing teacher that summer, Orson Scott Card, was extremely supportive of my script and suggested that I show it to various BYU faculty members—chief among them was Brother England.

I remember walking over to Brother England’s house early one Sunday evening and being astounded by the energy in his household. The place seemed filled with family, students, friends. I felt as if I had wandered into a scene from a Mormonized version of You Can’t Take It with You. Brother England took a copy of my script to read. He contacted me a week later and was very supportive in his praise and unbelievably helpful in his criticisms. A week or so later, he asked if he could use my script as required reading in his Mormon literature class during the following year. I was astounded!

On my birthday the following December, Brother England gave me a copy of his book Brother Brigham, with a beautifully written inscription inside, in which he thanked me for my “understanding of Brother Joseph.” That book is one of my most prized possessions. When Digger won BYU’s Mayhew Award for Drama the following spring, I felt this was in no small way due to Brother England’s influence. I never saw Brother England after leaving BYU in 1982, but I read about him in LDS publications. I also enjoyed his own writings in such periodicals as Sunstone and This People.

For the past two years, I’ve been working on a novel about the Saints in the 1880s. I looked forward to the day when I could send him a copy of the manuscript. His artistic insights helped me with my first attempt at writing; I’m sure that now I’d glean even more from his insights. Given Brother England’s integrity, I’d have valued most highly any opinion—positive or negative—that he had regarding my literary efforts.

—Rob Lauer
from Irreantum 3.3 (Autumn 2001): 27

We love you, Gene. You are to me as unambiguously and unassumingly fine a person as Hardy’s description of a character in “The Woodlanders”: “He was a good man, and he done good things.” You’re as close to a living, breathing saint as I’ve in sixty years known—as many of us have ever known. And even better than the saintliness in you, I like the Gene in you. The world is just so much a better place with you in it.

—Steven C. Walker
from Irreantum 3.3 (Autumn 2001): 27