Living Faith

‘We all have a story,’ said Gail Miller, honoring ancestors and pioneers at This Is the Place Heritage Park devotional

She related her ancestral history and offered gratitude for the Latter-day Saint pioneers during the July 17 SUPer DUPer event

By Ryker Eggenberger July 18, 2023 1 p.m. EDT

A woman in a white shirt stands behind a pulpit.

Living Faith

‘We all have a story,’ said Gail Miller, honoring ancestors and pioneers at This Is the Place Heritage Park devotional

She related her ancestral history and offered gratitude for the Latter-day Saint pioneers during the July 17 SUPer DUPer event

By Ryker Eggenberger July 18, 2023 1 p.m. EDT

Recounting stories from her ancestors and those she heard from a neighbor who had had been a 19th-century pioneer coming to the Salt Lake Valley, Gail Miller said her story begins not with her childhood but generations before, with ancestors she never knew.

“Everyone has a story,” she said, choking back tears. “Our stories connect us with each other, and they can bridge us to our fathers.”

Miller, the owner of the Larry H. Miller Company, related her ancestral history and offered gratitude for pioneers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during SUPer DUPer Day at This Is the Place Heritage Park on Monday, July 17.

The event is held annually on the Monday before July 24 — the anniversary of the date the first pioneers came to the Salt Lake Valley. It is sponsored by the National Society of the Sons of Utah Pioneers and International Society Daughters of Utah Pioneers. Utah officers of the Sons of Utah Pioneers, international officers of Daughters of Utah Pioneers and President M. Russell Ballard, Acting President of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, attended Miller’s address during a morning devotional.

Miller started her address by relating the story of Agnes Branch, a pioneer who crossed the Great Plains and lived in Miller’s childhood neighborhood in Salt Lake City.

The only member of her family to live through the trek to Utah, Branch lived to be 98 years old. Miller got emotional as she recounted the stories that Branch told her of the first lightbulb that came to Salt Lake City and the huge trains that traveled across the country.

‘A family I never knew’

“I don’t remember much about the day I was born,” Miller said, drawing a collective chuckle from the audience. “But I do remember my childhood ... I had a humble, but magical, childhood.”

“As I grew up, I learned to be creative ... I’ve experienced joy and sorrows, heartache and love, and I’m trying to live a life of service,” she said.

Miller went on to tell the story of her ancestors, because, she said, “my story began generations — actually, centuries ago — with a family I never knew.”

Among the stories of her ancestors that Miller recounted, she spoke of her great-grandfather, Johan Jochim Heinrich Otte.

The story of Johann Otte

Otte was born in Prussia in 1843 and later met his future wife, Ane Sorensdatter, while working for the government in Copenhagen, Denmark. Unfortunately, Ane passed away giving birth to their first child, Ane Maria.

Jorgen Johansen and his wife, Gertrude, who were close friends of the couple, took care of the baby while Otte grieved. However, the Johansens had recently joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and decided to make the long journey to Utah.

“But what about little baby Ane Maria? They couldn’t leave the child that they had grown to love behind,” Miller recounted. “They could hear the father pacing back and forth in his dorm night after night, weeping, not knowing what to do. He finally decided that little Ane Maria would be better off with two loving parents in America than a governess in Denmark.”

A woman speaks at a stand in front of a large, open room full of people sitting in white chairs.

The Johansens eventually settled in Cache Valley, Utah, and Otte remarried in Denmark and had seven children, one of which was Hans Fredrick Otte, Miller’s grandfather. Johan Otte continued his work for the Danish government and was baptized a member of the Church in 1895.

“After being ordained to the priesthood, Johan made the statement ‘I have had many fine honors come to me in my life, but this is the greatest honor of all,’” Miller said.

In 1898, Otte traveled to Utah and was reunited with the Johansens and his long-lost daughter, Ane Maria. He died on Christmas Eve that same year, “surrounded by good music and loving family,” Miller said.

“I am thankful for my heritage,” she continued. “I know I am who I am because of those who have gone before me.”

Pioneer lessons are ‘alive and available today’

Miller also spoke of the pioneers in the 19th century, explaining that those Saints learned lessons that are “alive and available today.”

“Some of the lessons they learned were perseverance, faith and religious conviction, cooperation and community, preparedness and sufficiency, and sacrifice and service,” she said.

A woman in a white shirt talking with another woman.

She went on to express the importance of focusing on the “lessons of our ancestors and what they provided as they created the roadmap of our lives.”

“Just as we reach back to our ancestors and our fundamental values, so we, as guardians of that ancestry, must reach ahead to our children and their children, and we do so with a sense of sacredness in that reaching,” she said.

“We are who we are because of those who went before us and showed us the way through their courage, their conviction and their desire to make the world a better place.”

Katie Ann Powell, Holly Biesinger and Kianna Behunin — members of the Days of ’47 Royalty — sang two songs for the devotional, the latter of which was accompanied by Powell on the harp.