Gene, I know of very few people on this planet who are held in such high esteem by those who know them. Your combination of intellect and goodness is not just rare, it comes close to being unique, at least in my experience. You’ve done a lot of good in this world already, but beyond […]

My husband David first met the Englands in the Bay Area in 1967, when all three were members of the Palo Alto Ward. Gene, of course, was already known as a thinker and a doer, and he could always be counted on to move a class from rote repetition into meaningful discussion and thinking. My […]

I had an interesting experience with Gene England that I often tell the writers I work with. I was fortunate enough to take Gene’s LDS literature class, and later he served on my thesis committee, since it was a collection of personal essays. (John Bennion was my advisor and I can’t say enough good about […]

Gene was so many different things to so many different people—a Don Quixote espousing idealistic causes, an empathetic counselor, a brilliant teacher of Shakespeare, an essayist par excellence, a voice for the oppressed, a crusader in the original sense of the word (one who takes up the cross of Christ), and a friend in time […]

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 […]

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 […]