Mormon Women: Christine Durham

By Danielle Stockton

About the author:
Danielle Stockton is a recent graduate of the Madeira School, where she was the co-editor-in-chief of both the school newspaper and the literary and arts magazine. She will be a freshman at Brigham Young University intending to double major in Political Science and English.

To be a Chief Justice in the Utah Supreme Court, it is necessary to have numerous exceptional qualities, including intelligence, confidence, determination, and a sense of fairness. Christine Durham delivers on all counts. Reading about her journey in the book Mormon Women: Portraits and Conversations deeply affected me because along with her LDS faith, this capable woman followed her passion and was able to best fulfill the Gospel by becoming an agent of governmental change.

Even in Durham’s early years, her life was filled with unique experiences. When Durham watched her family become increasing ensconced in the LDS faith, she saw that they received both personal and spiritual benefits. More specifically, although her family came from a less prosperous background, her father had always worked hard in life; however, being in the LDS church “gave him a core to his life and enabled him to make sense out of it”(189). As a result, Durham’s father became a Treasury attaché at the Paris Embassy. This move positively affected everyone in the family because due to learning French, Durham observed that “we were asked to do a lot of things. My father served in the mission and district presidencies. My mother did everything. She ran Primary and Relief Society for a while.” (189)

Part of what first drew Durham’s family to the LDS church was the emphasis on education and doing one’s personal best to fulfill the principles of the Gospel. Durham capitalized on this aspect of the LDS doctrine by choosing to attend the intellectually rigorous Wellesley College. During her time at Wellesley, Durham had the opportunity to become “quite active in the Cambridge Ward, which at that time was the only LDS congregation in the Boston area.” (190) Moreover, Durham also gained invaluably as a result of the Wellesley experience because she states “I came out of Wellesley with a strong sense of myself as someone who had an obligation to contribute and the ability to contribute. By my last year at Wellesley I had focused on a legal education as one way to do that.” (192)

Moreover, Durham attributes much of her professional success to her loving family life. Even when she first met her husband George, Durham realized how rare and wonderful it was that George not only appreciated her personality and spirituality, but also her intelligence. As a result of this connection, the pair was able to have a loving, supportive relationship that fostered a healthy family life, which included compromising as needed. For example, when Durham had the opportunity to teach a summer course at Duke University, she describes the experience as “very demanding, and George decided to take the summer off to care for our two little girls full-time.” (194) Durham also made sacrifices to support her husband George. For instance, Durham decided “to transfer all of my credits and finish law school at Duke” (193) when George was admitted to Duke Medical School. These experiences caused the couple to be empathetic of each other’s situations, which is a trait that is encouraged in LDS relationships and that I seek to emulate eventually.

Above all, Durham’s solid faith in the LDS religion greatly enriched all parts of her life. One particular instance of the influence of Durham’s LDS faith that inspired me was that Durham felt the intense urge to fight for attention for her child with Down syndrome when at the time, certain programs for special needs were not offered. Ultimately, it is evident to me that Christine Durham would not be the same person without her LDS faith.

To find out more about how Jim Kimball and Kent Miles capture some of the lives of Mormon women, please read their collection: Kimball, James N., and Kent Miles. Mormon Women: Portraits & Conversations. Salt Lake City: Handcart Books, 2009.

Also, please visit the following websites related to this book:
http://www.kentmiles.com
http://www.handcartbooks.com/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=101103385311&ref=mf
http://twitter.com/MormonWomenBook