This biographical sketch adapted from "News of the Church: Elder Royden
G. Derrick of the First Quorum of Seventy" in the
Ensign, November 1976, page 137 on the occasion of his call to serve
in the First Quorum of the Seventy.
When Royden G. Derrick returned to the United States
this summer, after serving for three years as president of the England
Leeds Mission, he planned to devote a great deal of time to two great
humanitarian interests: genealogical research and an
inter-American organization. Having sold an intermountain company,
of which he was president and general manager, he
looked forward to having time for these projects. He had served as
chairman of the board of Partners of the Americas, in
which forty-four states are allied with areas of Latin America for
development of that country. As examples of their success:
sixty-three schools have been built in Bolivia with the aid of Utah’s
school children, and some 50,000 children are now
receiving dental care who previously had none.
However, in September 1976 Elder Derrick was again
called by the Church to Britain, this time to serve for ten months as
president of the new Ireland Dublin Mission. He will be released July
1, 1977.
When Elder Derrick left for that second mission just
weeks before general conference, he had no idea that another call
would soon be made. He told the Ensign shortly after the announcement,
“When President [Spencer W.] Kimball called
me a day or two ago and asked if I would accept the call, I can tell you
it was a surprise. I really never thought that I would receive a call of
this kind, and it’s a sobering experience, one that makes you get down
on your knees before the Lord.”
Elder Derrick was born September 7, 1915, in Salt
Lake City, Utah, the son of Hyrum and Margaret Glade Derrick. He
received his early education there and studied engineering at the University
of Utah. Later he served for eight years on their
board of regents and received an honorary doctorate degree there in
1965. Brigham Young University honored him in 1973
with the Jesse Knight Industrial Citizenship Award.
In 1938 Elder Derrick married Allie Jean Olsen in
the Salt Lake Temple, and they have four children: Lynda Jean (Mrs. J.
Roger Wood) of Orinda, California; James Royden, an industrial engineer;
David Glade, now completing an MBA degree at
the University of Utah; and the youngest, Bruce Glade, eighteen, also
attending the University of Utah. The Derricks have five
grandchildren.
Elder Derrick has a long history of service in the
Church. He has served as a teacher in priesthood quorums and Sunday
School, as ward clerk, bishop’s counselor, and from 1954 to 1957 as
a member of the Sunday School General Board. He was
released from that call to serve in the Monument Park Stake presidency.
He was called to the general superintendency of the
Sunday School in December 1966 and served until June 1971. He has also
been a guide on Temple Square.
“As I contemplate this new responsibility,” Elder
Derrick said, “I realize what a very high regard I have for those with
whom
I will be working. I surely do sustain them. I always have.
“I have come to realize who I am really working for,
and that is the Savior. This is a call from Him. I pray that my labors
will be acceptable to Him.”
In 1980 Elder Derrick was called to serve in the Presidency of the Seventy, which duty he performed honorably until his release in 1984. Then on October 1, 1989 he was released from the Seventy and named an Emeritus General Authority. He was given a vote of thanks from a grateful Church in General Conference assembled.
