When Robert D. Hales was a young teenager living on Long Island, his father took him to the Sacred Grove in upstate New York, the same forested sanctuary where Mormon founder Joseph Smith — at about the same age — had reported seeing heavenly messengers more than a century earlier.
That lifetime of dedication to the faith he loved — including various leadership posts in his local Mormon congregations, more than 40 years as an LDS general authority and 23 years as an apostle — ended at 12:15 p.m. Sunday, when Hales died at age 85.
He “died peacefully today at 12:15 p.