Tanner, Sandra, 1941-

Sandra McGee Tanner was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 14 January 1941. Two years later her parents, Ivan and Georgia Young McGee, moved their family to the San Fernando Valley of California, where Sandra was raised. In her youth, Sandra was very active in activities of the LDS Church (the Mormon Church, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). She participated in the seminary and institute programs, but in her late teens she began questioning the doctrine and history of the Mormon church. In the spring of 1959, while Sandra was in Salt Lake City, she and her grandmother attended one of Jerald Tanner's religious meetings. Jerald (1938-2006), a church member who had became associated with the Church of Christ-Lukites, a splinter group of the RLDS Church (now the Community of Christ)led by Pauline Hancock, held religious meetings in the evenings during which tape recordings of Pauline Hancock's sermons were played. Two months later, on 14 June1959, Sandra and Jerald were married by a Protestant minister in California. Following her marriage, Sandra requested that her name be removed from the church membership rolls, and formally left the LDS Church. Sandra and Jerald Tanner founded Modern Microfilm Company in order to disseminate information acquired in their research. The name of the company waas later changed to the Utah Lighthouse Ministry.

From the guide to the Sandra Tanner oral history interviews, 1972-1983, (J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah)

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