ETB was senile and bedridden the last few years of his life...
Other Mormon leaders made the decisions and signed his name to documents...
From Steve Benson:
Other Mormon leaders made the decisions and signed his name to documents...
"By 1993, my grandfather was on his last mental and physical legs, being in full decline on both counts.
He exhibited only brief moments of awareness of his surroundings and was unable to carry on meaningful conversations, including with members of his own family.
I personally witnessed his condition deteroriate to this state over the course of several years.
By 1993, he had had a suffered from series of significant health setbacks, including blood clots on the brain, a stroke and a heart attack, all of which had been downplayed to one degree or another by the Church.
My grandfather eventually died in May 1994, barely a year after the conference to which you refer.
By September 1993, even Apostles Oaks and Maxwell were personally (but only privately) confirming the reality of ETB's increasingly debilitated state.
In a visit that month with my wife, Mary Ann, and I in Maxwell's Church Administration Building office, Oaks admitted that my grandfather's health was declining steadily (a fact that we both, as well as our children, already knew from personal visits with him in the confines of his apartment overlooking Temple Square).
Oaks said the Quorum of the Twelve rotated in pairs each week to visit my grandfather at the apartment, with the purpose of only to check in on how he was doing, not to engage in adminstrative action or to discuss major issues, since my grandfather was incapable of doing any such thing.
Maxwell said that when Church members asked him how the prophet was doing, he would reply only that "he is not in pain."
Either Maxwell or Oaks (I would have to go back and check my notes from the visit) also told us that major administrative decisions were not being made, given the inability of my grandfather to be involved in the process.
I asked Oaks why he didn't come out and set the record straight on my grandfather's health, especially since the Church Public Relations Department, headed by Don LeFevre at the time, was issuing press releases significantly misrepresenting my grandfather's actual mental and physical condition.
Oaks responded by waving dismissively in the direction of the the Church Office Building (which we could see through the windows of Maxwell's office) and saying, "I don't know what goes on over there in the high rise."
I then asked Maxwell why he didn't speak up on the actual state of my grandfather's health.
Maxwell replied by saying he already had several responsibilities and "didn't need any more."
Oaks then urged me to deal with the issue of my grandfather's health through "back channels," rather than in the public square (a sure-fire remedy for deep-sixing the whole thing).
I chose not to follow that advice.
A few weeks later, during 1993 October Conference, I encountered Don LeFevre of the Church PR Department and asked him why he was releasing statements about the health of my grandfather that were clearly not true.
LeFevre told me, "All my statements have been approved by my superiors."
I responded, "Don, that doesn't make them true."
LeFevre simply replied, "Steve, this is a difficult job."
It is a matter of public record (thanks to the reporting of the Salt Lake Tribune) that--in direct contravention of established protocol for the transfer of power in the event that the Church president should die OR become incapacitated--Hinckely and Monson had the power of attorney over LDS corporate affairs shifted to them in the Church's incorporation documents a few years before my grandfather's death (see Talmadge's treatment of Church governance procedures in Articles of Faith).
Instead of having the First Presidency dissolved and an acting president installed to administer the affairs of the Church in a situation when the sitting president was unable to perform his duties, Hinckely and Monson had legal authority to run the Mormon empire transferred directly to them by the highly unusual method of employing my grandfather's autopen signature machine on Church incorporation documents (see an account of this episode in Quinn's Extensions of Power).
It's rotten, folks--to the core."