Oral History

Dr. Donald G. Mantyla Oral History Project
Interview with Dr. Donald Mantyla
Date of Interview: March 29, 2009; 4317 Lynne Lane Salt Lake City, Utah
Interviewer: Natali Wyson
Transcriber: Natali Wyson
Begin Tape 1, Side 1

Wyson: This is the Dr. Donald G. Mantyla Oral History Project with Dr. Mantyla on March 29th, 2009. We are in his home, 4317 Lynne Lane Salt Lake City, Utah. The interviewer in Natali Wyson, granddaughter of Dr. Mantyla from Brigham Young University.

Wyson: So you are retired from dentistry but still practicing law as a dental malpractice attorney. Obviously you have accomplished a lot, but let’s talk about where it began. Where were you born?

Mantyla: I was born in Salt Lake City Utah on August 6th, 1927. It was just my mother and dad. I was the first of 3 children. And my grandmother lived with us.

Wyson: What kinds of media did you use growing up? Did you listen to the radio?

Mantyla: Yes I listened to the radio a lot. In fact my mother got quite aggravated with me because one of the ways I was able to study best was listening to the radio at the same time (laughs). She couldn’t understand how I could get as good of grades as I did while listening to the radio all the time.

Wyson: What did you listen to?

Mantyla: Primarily I liked the comedy shows like Amos and Andy…you probably have never even heard of that, Jack Armstrong, Flash Gordon and things like that. Also some news but they didn’t have a lot of news back then.

Wyson: Did your family ever listen to the radio together? Did your mother listen to any of the soap operas?

Mantyla: We never really listened to it as a family. Oh no she didn’t ever quote “waste her time” listening to soap operas but we listened to what little news there was upon occasion.

Wyson: Did you read any newspapers?

Mantyla: We read the local Salt Lake Tribune regularly

Wyson: What was the focus of the coverage in the Salt Lake tribune? Was it strictly local or did they pull many associated press stories?

Mantyla: They did have some national news but for the most part it was local news

Wyson: Do you notice a difference between that and the newspapers now? Were they more or less biased or the same?

Mantyla: I…of course it’s hard to remember that far back; it’s been a long time. But I don’t think there was nearly as much political rhetoric and things like that as there is now. There also was not really the same celebrity coverage…of course before tv we didn’t have television stars but we did have people like Bob Hope and Jack Benny.

Wyson: How old were you when TV came out, do you remember?

Mantyla: I know exactly how old I was because I was just starting dental school so that would have been about 1948. But I didn’t really watch much because I was busy with school. When I got into practice, I would relax some and watch a little bit of television but I didn’t really watch much.

Wyson: All right grandpa well you know how much I love romance so let’s move away from this technical stuff a bit. How did you meet Grandma?

Mantyla: Well I met grandma when I had just gotten home from the navy. I served in the United States Navy in World War II and I went to a football game at the University of Utah. I had had a year at the University before I went into the navy. I got home just in time for the first football game. When I was there I saw this beautiful blonde young lady and in fact I even still remember the suit she was wearing, she was wearing a very pretty suit and she was first attendant to the queen. I still remember, I had a date with me and I nudged my friend who was with me and I said “Mel”…his name was Mel Naler and he had just gotten back from the navy too, and I said “Mel” I said “Look at that beautiful blonde girl down there, I’d sure like to meet her sometime.” But then I really didn’t meet her until almost a year after that.

We had a fraternity/sorority exchange and I was a Cappa Sigma and she was a Delta Delta Delta and she came to the exchange. And she was kind of…we didn’t have dates of course but she was very good friends with a fellow fraternity brother of mine whose name was Dave Cheeny. And anyway it was in the early fall and the weather was nice so she and he went and sat on the front steps of the fraternity house. Well I just happened to be coming out of the door as she and he got up and she had a navy blue dress on. Boy, haven’t I got a memory? She had a navy blue dress on and she had gotten a little bit of dust on it. So I went over and very gently just brushed off the back of her dress where the dust was. And she reared around and said “What on Earth do you think you’re doing?!” And I said “Oh I’m sorry, I was just brushing your dress off on the back where you got some dust on it.” And she said “Well!” And that was all the conversation we had that day (laughs).

Then the next week I was on the committee for the fraternity and we were choosing the young ladies that we would like to run for the queen of our fall formal. There were about four or five other girls that had been nominated and Colleen was one of them. Nobody on the board really knew her very well cause she was born and raised in Heber so they said, “Does anybody know this Colleen Clyde? All the girls need to have a date” So I said, “I do, I’ll take her!” So I called her up that night, told her my name and she said, “Well who are you?” And I said “I’m Don Mantyla” and she said “I don’t know any Don Mantyla” and I said “Well if I tell you why you know me then maybe you’ll be kinda’ upset…I’m the one that brushed off the back of your dress at the fraternity/sorority exchange last week.” And she said, not too kindly, “oh I remember you.” I then said “Well what I’m calling about, I’d surely appreciate it if you would be my date to our fall formal.” And she said, “Well I don’t know. I don’t know what kind of a guy you might be. I don’t know if I’ll go with you or not.” And I said, “really I’m not a bad guy” and so she consented then to go with me.

From that first date, it just got better and better and better and then in January I asked her if I could pin her. Do you know what pinning means? Well…when you are in a fraternity, if you had a special girl then you would put your fraternity pin on her and that meant she was taken. So I asked her if she would wear my fraternity pin and she said she would. Then it was in May that year that I gave her an engagement ring. Actually we went up to the canyon in Heber and had a little picnic lunch. I had looked for 3 months for a ring. During the picnic I said, “Here, give me your finger” and she stuck her finger out. Then I pulled the ring out of my pocket and put it on her finger and said, “This is an engagement ring!” And she said, “I didn’t say I wanted to be engaged to you!” (laughs) And I said “Well really, you really like me don’t you?” And she said “Well…Yes I do like you, okay.” But then the next week she came to Salt Lake and we had a date that night. During dinner she said, “I can’t keep this engagement ring.” I said, “Why not?” And she said, “Well my mom and dad don’t think, particularly my mom, doesn’t think I should get engaged.” And I said “You are gonna’ keep that ring.” She said, “Well no I’m not” and I said “Gimme your finger, you are!” And I took the ring and pushed it back on her finger (laughs)! She went home and from then on that ring stayed. That summer was when I was going to go to dental school and we had kind of decided we would wait until I was done with dental school to get married. But as we thought more about it, we decided to get married when I came home in December for Christmas break. We got married on December 23rd, which is Joseph Smith’s birthday, but of course that didn’t mean anything to me at that time because I was a very staunch Lutheran.

Wyson: Oh so grandma wasn’t LDS?

Mantyla: No she was.

Wyson: Was that why her parents objected?

Mantyla: No, not really…maybe partially but they weren’t very active. My parents were much stronger Lutheran than her family was LDS. But I told her, I said, “If you want to marry me, we’re going to get married in the Lutheran church, we’re not going to get married in the LDS church.” And she consented so we got married in the Lutheran church. And we just had our 60th wedding anniversary in December of this year.

Wyson: And when did you have your first kid?

Mantyla: Well I don’t know if I should tell you this but as far as the doctors could tell us, Coleen got pregnant the exact day I graduated from dental school (laughs). So it seems our timing was pretty good!

Begin Tape 1, Side 2

Wyson: All right so let’s talk about your conversion. Obviously you were Lutheran when you got married, when did you become Mormon and how did that happen?

Mantyla: I started my dental practice in Roosevelt with an LDS population that made up about 95% of the people. So I was kind of an outsider but we made a lot of good friends. After being in Roosevelt for about two and a half weeks, we had these two young ladies come visit us who had just gotten home from missions. We wanted to be congenial so we let them come in and visit with us and so they did and continued to come visit every Wednesday on my days off. They came each week for about six or seven weeks and usually gave us missionary discussions. Then on the last time they came, they asked, “Well when would you like to be baptized?” And I said, “What are you talking about? I’m not going to join the LDS church. I appreciate you young ladies coming to visit and you are very nice but I have no intention of ever becoming LDS.” And one thing that made me a little upset was they never again bothered to come see us. Course I can’t blame them but that shut the door and I was very disconcerted. I mean I thought we had come to be very good friends and thought that they might come back and just visit as friends but evidently all they had in mind was wanting to convert me and get me into the church. So that left a little bit of a bad taste.

Then we made a lot of good friends and we actually lived in Roosevelt for 24 years before I became a member of the church. But about 5 years before that I had a good friend who was a patient of mine and he was a stake missionary. He came in one day and said “Dr. Mantyla, I’ve just been made stake mission leader and was wondering if it would be alright if me and my companion came over to visit sometime?” Of course I said “sure” because they were very nice people. So he brought his companion over who was also a patient of mine, which was not a surprise since almost everyone in town was a patient of mine (laughs). They came every Wednesday. Eventually they asked, “Would you be very upset if we had some of our local full-time missionaries come visit you?” I said that would be fine and so they started coming each week for about 5 years. I just can’t imagine why they didn’t give up on us! That last year, I really started to pray because I could see a lot truth and very interesting things in the church. I agreed with what the church purported because my parents brought me up to be completely obedient to the commandments, that you should be honest and good to your fellow man…you didn’t smoke or drink, or do anything bad with girls and such. Basically they taught all the same morals as members of the church. But my biggest hang up was I just couldn’t believe in the theology of the church. Because in the Lutheran church, God was ethereal. God and Christ were beings but they didn’t have any body, parts or passions. So it was very difficult for me to see that the concept of a man like Joseph Smith seeing God and Jesus Christ could ever be the truth. It was just hard for me to do that. But I did see that there were a lot of things, like the various artifacts and evidences found in South America, which really made a lot of sense when taken in consideration of the Book of Mormon.

So I really started to pray about it. This one Wednesday morning when I was getting ready and Colleen was making breakfast, I knelt down to pray. It was a beautiful morning and the sun was coming in through our upstairs bedroom windows. And anyway I was kneeling at my bed praying and all the sudden I felt a presence in my room. I thought maybe Colleen had come up but I hadn’t heard her so I tried to open my eyes but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t open my eyes. I had a tremendous feeling…I don’t know if an angel was there or if Christ was there, I just don’t know…but I couldn’t open my eyes…finally it disappeared and I opened my eyes. I asked Colleen if she had been upstairs and she said, “No I have been downstairs the whole time.” But that was my first spiritual experience and I listened much more diligently to the missionaries after that.

Wyson: So did you get baptized soon after?

Mantyla: Well actually it still took a bit more time and a couple more experiences. At this time I was working on a project for a dental association where I was going to Utah every week on Wednesday. So the missionaries started coming on Tuesdays. One Tuesday in September of 1973, the missionaries came and I couldn’t come cause I had to work at the office late so they just met with Colleen. I came home just as they were leaving and they had had her listen to some tapes. One tape was the conversion of an Augustine Munk (I can’t remember his name) and also another tape that was the seventeen points of conversion. They said “Dr. Mantyla we would sure like you to listen to these tapes when you have the opportunity,” so I promised I would. I left to Salt Lake the next day with another tape put out by Wall Street that I always listened to but on my way out I happened to be walking past the mantle with those two missionary tapes so I decided to take them since I had told the missionaries I would. I had put the tape on that I wanted to listen to and when that was over I turned on the radio but there was nothing good on. So since I had promised the missionaries, I decided to listen to the tapes.

First I listened to the conversion of the monk. It was a beautiful day, and as I was driving, I was really listening intently and the things he was talking about really made sense. The Holy Ghost just started working on me and I realized, “Man the things he is talking about really are true.” I started the other tape when that finished around Strawberry Valley, and just like with the other tape, everything they were talking about just made so much sense and was just right in line with my feelings. As the tape was ending I just felt SO happy; I can’t describe it. Everything looked so wonderful: the cars were beautiful, the people were beautiful…Anyway I just felt absolutely marvelous and as I went to the counter in the hotel when I arrived I spoke with the same ladies as always but they too just looked so beautiful. I went to go to my room on the third floor, I opened the door in my room and just started to weep. I just cried. I couldn’t stop it. But anyway, I thought after that, “I’m going to call Colleen and make an appointment with the bishop to get baptized.” I called and she as gone. Then during the day while I was doing my research, that really wonderful feeling started to disappear. When I got to the room that night I called Colleen and said “I’m sad you weren’t there this morning. I felt so good and wanted to get baptized but now after I have felt the influence of Satan getting to me throughout the day , I’m just not sure I want to get baptized anymore.”

A while later, I had lunch with a friend named Dale Jones who was a very good member of the church. We were eating our lunch, one thing I liked is that he never pushed religion on me, but this one time he said “Don, do you know who that is sitting over there?” And I said, “Well I guess I have seen his picture somewhere but no I don’t know who that is.” Dale said, “Well that’s the president of the LDS church, would you like to meet him?” I said “Well sure I like to meet anyone.” So we walked over and met him but didn’t shake hands or anything because he had two other men with him whom I supposed were his body guards. Then we went back over to our table and finished up. Then a little before conference started, he came over to our table and said “Dr. Mantyla, it was certainly a pleasure to meet you, do you have any children?” I was getting so worried cause I knew the LDS conference was going to start at 2 and it was about ten minutes to! He talked with me for probably about 5 minutes then, when he was leaving, he reached down to shake my. I had never felt a hand like that. He didn’t feel like a man’s hand or a woman’s hand. And well, I don’t know what an angels hand felt like but something just hit me that said “this man is a prophet.”

When I got home I still wasn’t absolutely sure I wanted to get baptized but then after thinking about it more and pondering I finally told Colleen that I wanted to get baptized. This was around the first week of September. The bishop came over and I had Marty come in and speak with him with me (cause Mary and Don were already baptized). I talked to Marty and said “Well as long as I’m getting baptized and everyone else is, how about you do too?” Marty said “No dad, I really don’t want to get baptized into the Mormon church. You guys can but I don’t want to.” So I told the bishop it would just be me getting baptized but fortunately, Marty decided to join us a year later.