Editor’s note: These facts are sourced from In the Hands of the Lord: The Life of Dallin H. Oaks by Richard E. Turley.
President Dallin Harris Oaks was announced as the 18th President and prophet of the Church on Tuesday, October 14, 2025, during a live broadcast from Salt Lake City, Utah. President Oaks was sustained and set apart earlier in the day.
Here are 10 facts to help you get to know President Dallin H. Oaks better.
1. His middle name, Harris, is his mother’s maiden name. She was a great-granddaughter of Emer Harris, brother of Martin Harris, who was one of the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon.
2. At nine months old, he was in the car with his mother and her sister-in-law when they collided with another vehicle. Baby Dallin was “catapulted” from the car and landed on the concrete street. Miraculously, he only had a few bruises on his head.
3. His father died of tuberculosis when President Oaks was only seven years old. He and his siblings were raised by their maternal grandparents for the next couple of years while their mother was at Columbia University earning her master’s.
4. In eighth grade, he played oboe in the school band. By summer, he’d joined the Payson Summer Band and was paid to play in weekly concerts and holiday parades. He continued to improve when his mother arranged for him to take oboe lessons from a teacher at Brigham Young University.
5. From a young age, he excelled at reading. In ninth grade, he wrote in his diary that “he visited the library, checked out two books, came home, got ready for bed, ‘and finished a 300-page book in about 2½ hours.’”
6. After graduating from the University of Chicago Law School, he clerked for Chief Justice Earl Warren of the United States Supreme Court.
7. One night, after dropping off a ward member at her home in Chicago, President Oaks and his wife June were approached by a teenage hoodlum. He stuck a gun into President Oaks’s stomach and demanded money. President Oaks had no cash, and the teen eventually left. President Oaks credits the Lord with protecting him that night.
8. He was president of Brigham Young University from 1971–1980. During this time, his family lived on campus in the president’s home with their Great Dane, Gretchen.
9. He served as a justice on the Utah Supreme Court from 1981–1984.
10. He and President Russell M. Nelson were sustained as members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on the same day, April 7, 1984.
More articles about President Oaks:
▶ What Pres. Oaks said to his daughter that shaped her faith and life decisions
▶ Pres. Oaks shares when he experienced the ‘greatest’ growth—and it might surprise you
▶ 6 quotes from Pres. Nelson’s memorial broadcast that celebrate his legacy
