DC Temple History: Foundations of the church in DC

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Dale Van Atta is a New York Times best-selling author and journalist who has been nominated five times for the Pulitzer Prize. For more than a decade, he co-authored the world’s most widely syndicated news column with Jack Anderson; their daily column appeared in the Washington Post and nearly 1,000 other newspapers, reaching 50 million readers.  In fact, his name was once a clue in a New York Times crossword puzzle. Van Atta’s chief goal as an investigative journalist was to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable — especially unethical national legislators and presidential administration officials. Van Atta was a long time Roving Editor for Reader’s Digest and has been published in numerous other national publications.  He has appeared on a variety of national television news shows and is an accomplished lecturer with speeches delivered in more than 40 states and 17 countries. Van Atta has reported from all seven continents, including coverage of several wars.  He has interviewed U.S. Congressional members, business icons, top military commanders, terrorists, and spies, as well as notable world leaders and six United States presidents. His biographies have included hotelier Bill Marriott (Success Is Never Final); Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf (Stormin’ Norman: An American Hero); former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird (With Honor). While a student at Brigham Young University, he wrote the world’s fastest novel in a store window — 230 pages in 30 hours — as a fund raiser for a new library. Van Atta lives in Ashburn, Va., with his wife of 47 years, Lynne.  They have three children: Tara, Dylan and Kate, and five grandchildren.

Church History Q&A

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Daniel C. Jensen is the Collection Care Manager for the Church History department and has worked in various areas of the Preservation Division since 2013. Born in Salt Lake City, UT to an American father and Argentine mother, he has used his multicultural heritage, along with degrees in History and International Relations, and mission service in Guatemala, to better understand people and share the Gospel with them.

“Ungainly Old Chimney”: The Washington Monument's Tumultuous Journey from Inception to Icon

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Sarah Groesbeck has a BA in Art History and a MA in Historic Preservation. During graduate school she interned with the National Park Service, researching and writing about the Washington Monument and its grounds. Sarah worked in Cultural Resources Management in Washington, DC before moving to her current home in Baltimore, where she works for the State of Maryland as an Architectural Historian. She is a board member of the Society for the Preservation of Federal Hill and Fell’s Point and Secretary of The Friends of the Ship Caulkers’ Houses, a non-profit organization working to restore and tell the story of two small ca. 1798 wood frame houses that were home to free Black ship caulkers before the Civil War (shipcaulkers.org).

Foundations of Strong Testimonies: Ask Inspired Questions and Pay Attention to Your Data

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John M. Butler is an internationally recognized expert in forensic DNA analysis and holds a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from the University of Virginia. He has written five textbooks on Forensic DNA Typing (2001, 2005, 2010, 2012, and 2015) and given hundreds of invited talks to scientists, lawyers, and members of the general public throughout the United States and in more than 25 other countries so far. Dr. Butler’s research, first conducted at the FBI Laboratory and now at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), pioneered the methods used today worldwide for DNA testing in criminal casework, paternity investigations, and many DNA ancestry assessments.  He has been honored in multiple White House ceremonies (2002 and 2015) for his work in advancing DNA testing.

In 2011, ScienceWatch.com named him the worldwide high-impact author in legal medicine and forensic science over the previous decade. A 2020 Stanford University analysis of eight million scientists published since 1960 put Dr. Butler as #7 (#1 from the United States) out of 10,159 researchers worldwide in the subcategory of legal medicine and forensic science. He has received the Gold Medal (2008) and Silver Medal (2002) from the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Scientific Prize of the International Society for Forensic Genetics (2003), the Paul L. Kirk Award from the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (2017), and the Magnus Mukoro Award for Integrity in Forensic Science from the NYC Legal Aid Society (2020). Dr. Butler is a NIST Fellow (highest scientific rank at NIST) and Special Assistant to the Director for Forensic Science in the NIST Special Programs Office. He served as the Vice-Chair of the National Commission on Forensic Science from 2013 to 2017. In 2019, he was elected the President of the International Society for Forensic Genetics, which has 1300 members in 84 countries.