Francis M. Gibbons

Francis M. Gibbons (1921 to 2016) was a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for thirty years, a former secretary to the First Presidency and a prolific biographer of LDS Church presidents. Born in Arizona in 1921, Elder Gibbons forged a remarkable life as a student, missionary, husband, father, lawyer and local church leader. Then, in his late forties, he was called as the secretary to the First Presidency. Over the succeeding decades he gave the most significant service of his life, serving as secretary to the First Presidency under four different Presidents of the Church—Joseph Fielding Smith, Harold B. Lee, Spencer W. Kimball and Ezra Taft Benson—and then as a General Authority of the Church for three decades. In mid life Elder Gibbons also commenced his literary career, and became the most prolific and well-known biographer of Church Presidents of all time, writing full-length biographies on all of the Mormon Prophets. To date fourteen of those biographies have been published by Deseret Book Company, and are among the best-selling works of LDS biography of all time.