Utah: How It Is Out There

When Millionaire Mormon Ernest L.

(for Leroy) Wilkinson, 65, resigned as president of Utah's Brigham Young University earlier this year, he gave as his reason "new challenges." That seemed odd. Wilkinson, a Napoleon-size (5 ft. 5 in.) ultraconservative, had already met enough challenges for ten men. A Utah-born Washington lobbyist-lawyer, he spent 15 years making a name—and a reported $1,500,000—in winning a $31.7 million land-compensation judgment for the Ute Indian Tribe in 1950. He returned home that same year to become the $1-a-year president of faltering Brigham Young University, where students soon began calling him Ernie the Attorney (but not...