Brigham Young University

On March 18, 1980, during a devotional assembly in BYU’s Marriott Center, President Dallin H. Oaks announced the Board of Trustees’ decision to name the new campus management building in honor of N. Eldon Tanner. President Oaks characterized President Tanner as a practitioner and exemplar of the arts of management, as a man who has made a profound impact on the Church and its members, and as an appropriate role model for our students in management. At the groundbreaking, held November 8, 1980, speaker after speaker commented upon the appropriateness of honoring President Tanner with a building which would serve students and faculty in the years to come in much the same manner that N. Eldon Tanner has served the Church, his community, his country, and his family. N. Eldon Tanner was born May 8, 1898, in Salt Lake City, to Nathan William Tanner and Sarah Edna Brown Tanner. Most of his life was spent in the Mormon colonies in Alberta, Canada. He attended school in Calgary and, just a short time after graduation, became a teacher and principal of a three-room school in Hill Spring. There he met and married Sara Isabelle Merrill.