The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced today that President and Sister Wheelwright have been called by the First Presidency to serve as temple president and matron of the Boston Massachusetts Temple. They will return to Belmont, where they raised their three youngest children, to begin their service later this year.
The Wheelwrights spent much of their career in the Boston area where President Wheelwright served as the senior associate dean of the Harvard Business School's MBA program, a Baker Foundation professor and senior associate dean and director of Harvard Business School's publication activities.
When the Wheelwrights first arrived in Boston in 1971, there was only a single stake covering Massachusetts and Rhode Island and only a handful of chapels in the stake. Their service in their ward and stake has included seminary teaching, stake Young Men and Young Women presidents, bishop’s counselor, scoutmaster, stake Relief Society president, high council, bishop and stake president’s counselor.
The Wheelwrights were also very active in missionary work in the Boston area, and had the blessing of assisting with the teaching and baptizing of a work colleague and a couple of their neighbors, most of whom still live in the area. One of those families still lives in the Boston area and has a son serving as a Chinese speaker in the France Paris Mission.
Serving in the temple, specifically this temple, has special meaning for the Wheelwrights. While in Boston, President Wheelwright participated in the process to purchase the site where the temple now sits, and a decade ago they both served as ordinance workers in that temple, and President Wheelwright served as a sealer.
“I was serving in the bishopric and we were looking for a site for a new meetinghouse,” says President Wheelwright. “We met with the owner, a wonderful Italian Catholic, and one of the first questions she asked was if we were going to build a temple like she had seen in Washington D.C. She said that since her husband first purchased the property for development, he had always thought that this hill should have a nice ‘church’ on it.”
That was in 1978. Now the site has a meetinghouse and a temple. In the latter half of the 1990s the Wheelwrights both served on subcommittees involved in the permitting of the temple and the open house. They left Boston to preside over the England London Mission three months before the temple was completed.
The Boston Massachusetts Temple was dedicated on October 1, 2000, by President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910-2008) and was the Church’s 100th temple to be completed. There are now 144 operating temples in the world, with an additional 15 under construction and 14 announced.
Announcement in the LDS Church News:
Steven Charles Wheelwright, 71, Laie 2nd Ward, Laie Hawaii Stake, called as president of the Boston Massachusetts Temple, succeeding President H. Kent Bowen. President Wheelwright’s wife, Margaret Steele Wheelwright, will serve as temple matron, succeeding Sister Kathleen J. Bowen. He serves as president of Brigham Young University–Hawaii, high priests group instructor and temple sealer at the Laie Hawaii Temple. He has served as president of the England London Mission, stake president’s counselor, bishop, high councilor and temple ordinance worker. A former senior associate dean and professor at Harvard University and a professor at Stanford University, he was born in Salt Lake City to Max and Deborah Ann Coulam Wheelwright.
Sister Wheelwright served with her husband as he presided over the England London Mission. She has also served as stake Relief Society president, stake Young Women president, and in a ward Primary presidency. She was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, to John Hermon and Marye Margaret Hanegan Steele.
