His grandfather, John Watkins, a bricklayer, converted to Mormonism in Great Britain, walked into Utah in 1856 with a handcart full of belongings, a wife and two children. There he acquired two more wives, sired 30 more children (his descendants number about 750). Arthur Watkins, the Senator's father, was John's fifth child by his second wife; the Senator was the first of Arthur's nine children. He grew to be a mild, bookish boy who read whatever he could find in print, including the old newspapers that papered the walls of the Watkins home.
After becoming a basketball star at Brigham Young University,...
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