# Event Details - **Event Name**: Evening with the Author, Gary Bergera, Educating Zion: Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson - **Event Start and End Date**: Wed, 19 Nov, 2025 at 05:30 pm – Wed, 19 Nov, 2025 at 07:30 pm - **Event Description**: We are pleased to announce that Gary Bergera will be here to speak about Educating Zion: The Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson, 1952-1971 (published by Signature Books) on Wednesday, November 19. He will be here from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., will speak at 6:00, and answer questions and sign books before and after that time. During the twenty years he served as president of LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University (1951–71), Ernest L. Wilkinson transformed the school into a showplace of the church’s educational values. "More than any other single cause," his successor, Dallin H. Oaks, observed, “[Wilkinson's] remarkable and relentless leadership . . . is the key to the present stature of Brigham Young University.” Under Wilkinson, the student body grew more than four-fold to 25,000, the faculty tripled, colleges and departments more than doubled, library holdings increased nearly 500 percent, the number of buildings jumped twenty-fold, and as perhaps the most telling manifestation of Wilkinson's influence, annual LDS Church subsidies rose fifteen-fold to $22 million. His single-minded drive to mold BYU into the kind of institution he hoped would command the admiration of American academia permanently set the direction for Latter-day Saint higher education. As he presided over this academic landscape, Wilkinson produced about 5,000 pages of typed, single-spaced diaries—a literary creation that ranks among the most important diaries in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Wilkinson also had access to the highest echelon of the church, writing of numerous meetings of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Educating Zion assembles in one volume an annotated abridgement of those diary entries having the greatest interest to modern readers. The diaries are both a remarkable achievement and a phenomenal historical record whose importance cannot be overstated. https://www.benchmarkbooks.com/pages/books/40381/gary-james-bergera-ed/educating-zion-the-diaries-of-byu-president-ernest-l-wilkinson-1952-1971 - **Event URL**: https://allevents.in/south-salt-lake/evening-with-the-author-gary-bergera-educating-zion-diaries-of-byu-president-ernest-l-wilkinson/200029201824816 - **Event Categories**: art, literary-art, nonprofit, meetups - **Interested Audience**: - total_interested_count: 42 ## Ticket Details ## Event venue details - **city**: South Salt Lake - **state**: UT - **country**: United States - **location**: 3269 S Main St, Ste 250, South Salt Lake, UT, United States, Utah 84115 - **lat**: 40.70066 - **long**: -111.89074 - **full address**: 3269 S Main St, Ste 250, South Salt Lake, UT, United States, Utah 84115 ## Event gallery - **Alt text**: Evening with the Author, Gary Bergera, Educating Zion: Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson - **Image URL**: https://cdn-az.allevents.in/events7/banners/b0cff3373c9d9c448b95d2dade9f68e424bc5e42df1c84531102be9027789e2a-rimg-w970-h678-dc131314-gmir?v=1763229316 ## FAQs - **Q**: When and where is Evening with the Author, Gary Bergera, Educating Zion: Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson being held? - **A:** Evening with the Author, Gary Bergera, Educating Zion: Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson takes place on Wed, 19 Nov, 2025 at 05:30 pm to Wed, 19 Nov, 2025 at 07:30 pm at 3269 S Main St, Ste 250, South Salt Lake, UT, United States, Utah 84115. - **Q**: Who is organizing Evening with the Author, Gary Bergera, Educating Zion: Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson? - **A:** Evening with the Author, Gary Bergera, Educating Zion: Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson is organized by Benchmark Books. - **Q**: Who is this event for? Is it right for me? - **A:** Evening with the Author, Gary Bergera, Educating Zion: Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson is ideal for art lovers, collectors, creatives, and anyone inspired by visual arts, installations, and exhibitions. Whether you're a first-time attendee or a longtime enthusiast in South Salt Lake, this event is thoughtfully curated to deliver a standout experience worth every moment. If Evening with the Author, Gary Bergera, Educating Zion: Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson sounds like your kind of event, don't wait - spots fill up fast. ## Structured Data (JSON-LD) ```json [ { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Event", "name": "Evening with the Author, Gary Bergera, Educating Zion: Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. 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