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Show are put on Finishing touches compass-sea- l on Temple Square. George K. Ferguson, and James M. Carroll erect new fence. Temple Square Renovation By GEORGE L. SCOTT The grounds on Temple Square are taking on a new look. Much of the work has been completed and the thousands of tourists and visitors to the MIA June Conference admired the manner in which landscaping was perfected around new installations. One of the new features which attract- ed major attention was the huge circular nameplate, some 20 feet in diameter, which rests beneath the new flagpole between the Temple and the Tabernacle. 100-fo- Its intricate design in different colored concrete contains the circular identification lettering "Temple Square Salt Lake City Utah. Centered in the compass-lik- e enclosure is a map of the western hemisphere with colored concrete spears pointing north, south, east and west Under the direction of Irvin Nelson, chief landscape director, new flower plantd ings are replacing the early multi-colore- blooms of pansies and other spring blooms in the big concrete planters that extend from the south to the north gates on Temple Square Other shruhs and evergreens will grace the long bed at the base of the wall, west of the Temple. New lawns wiU come to life later in the summer as construction work is completed. Most noticable in this group is the transfer of the ornate steel fence from its old position south of the Temple to a d position 'loser to tire Temple on a par-aile- new wan topped with decorative granite. A wider slope of lawn will follow. Crews have been working steadily for weeks laying new concrete walks around the Tabernacle, Seagull Monument and the Assembly HaU. As soon as this work is completed, another big area of lawn be planted south of the Tabernacle. wiU Other plantings of young trees, shrubs and flowers grace the grounds near the new Visitors Center, Information Bureau, and Pioneer Cabin. Casper, Player, Scribe Visit Cumoratis Hill (The follouing column, written by famed sports columnist )m Murray, wot curried im the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers using the Times syndicate service. The column it used with permission u, the Los Angeles Times.) ROCHESTER Whenever his game goes sour on the tour, it is the custom for a golfer to go to the head pro to get things Straightened out This is the story of such a pilgrimage e made by the champion in this tournament, Bill Casper, who just may be the best player in this field in this year of Our Lord, never mind the bogeys he may have made Thursday. Most players are excited to be on the scene of a National Open. They go to great trouble qualifying, practicing, mending clubs, putting, thinking, mapping and two-tim- concentrating. Bill Casper was glad to be here because it was here, 138 years ago, a far more important tournament began. Golf is lucky to get second in the things that interest Casper. For most players in this tournament, hallowed ground may be file 18th hole in two. For Casper it is 14 miles south and west and it is called the milHill of Cumorah." For of a fountainhead it is the lion Mormons, lf religion. Bill could scarcely contain his excitement as he spotted this reporter in a knot of diners at the pre-Ope- n he asked, Grove with Gary tomorrow? you like, dinner. Would to go to Palmyra Player and me It sounded like a reasonable invitation to spend an afternoon in the company of two former Open champions and in this one. to accept Instead, I spent the afternoon in the company and haunts of a remarkable figure in American history a man born into the name of Joseph Smith. It was a far more extraordinary expe- rience particularly for toe two in toe group, Player and me than watching Bert Yancey shoot his 67 on Thursday. Casper kept moving up the departure time from Oak Hill for toe Joseph Smith farm and the grove of Palmyra and even cut his practice round to nine holes. It was in this spot, shaded by trees 250 years old and older, that the young Joseph Smith first saw a vision that was to become one of the world's extraordinary religions only 138 years later. It was here he said he was directed to a cache of golden tablcU in an ancient hieroglyphic Assyriac, Arabic or Chaldaic, certified by Egyptologists of the a knoll of lard We ascended the hill which rises some 400 or 500 feet above the not in the rough work Genessee Valley clothes of a farm hired hand as toe young Joseph Smith had, but in a lordly car. It was here, he said, he was told of a great civilization which had populated this continent a millennium before the arrival of Columbus, a society which had concealed the records of its existence on a notebook of gold in a New York hillside. It doesnt matter whether you believe toe Book of Mormon or whether you even know about it What is extraordinary in toe restoration of this historic event Is the d remarkably-constructec o m f o rtable, farmhouse Joseph Smith gave up as he fled those persecutors who hounded him through three states and finally to his lynching in Carthage, 111., in a jailhouse by an armed mob daubed in war paint It is the evidence of a man who died rather than recant, a movement that began in a shaft of sunlight 14 miles from here and ended in toe civilization of the Great Salt Lake Valley. To toe IBM machine and the thundercloud-dotted scoreboards oi this tournament, Bill Casper today is just one of more than 140 golfers who couldnt break par on the hills of oak. But the golden legend of Moroni will linger far longer in toe annals of the American story than how many golfers reached the 18th green in regulation or how many putts the field took jo negotiate the 18 holes of the first WEEK round a multiple of some 30 times the field. It was Gary Player, on the ride home, who noted that the only geography a golfer sees has holes in it and is roped off. A fulfilled prophecy is a guy saying he will shoot 66 and doing it. They would look at the Hill of Cumorah and ay Give me the 4 wood." But Casper has never looked happier on a winner's stand than he looked standing in the kitchen of toe Smith home wood stove or studying the the churn or the flax wheel and toe hurricane lamp. And Player never looked more three-legge- d thoughtfully at a curling downhill putt for the whole championship than he did at the giant elm tree in the dooryard which was giving shade to the family of Joseph Smith long before he made his historic ascent of the hill in 1823. "There is, said Gary Player, so much history in this country, its a shame to know only that part of it made with 13 dubs and a putter. And vou had the feeling that Bill Casr remember the opening per will round of the 9C8 Open for his 75 bat for the dogleg he made up the Hill of Cumorah. And the clubhouse will fade from his memory long before the Joseph Smith bedroom he saw. For him the lessons far transcend any that go merely to the position of fingers on a dub. For him the home pro is 14 miles away. ENDING JUNE 29; 4968 . CHURCH- -7 |