THE CULTURE WAR AND COMPROMISE

BY MIKE LEAVITT

t sounds counterintuitive, but America’s current political divide may actually pro-I vide the right environment for compromise, especially on some of the thorniest aspects of the nation’s simmering culture war. The key is mutual vulnerability.

As I learned when I was governor of Utah, and later as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, opposing political parties rarely reason together voluntarily. But when majority control is closely divided — as it is now — both parties have strong incentives to move to the middle. Standoffs can be tamed in the shared quest to win moderates.

The U.S. Senate is currently split 50-50, with the vice president breaking the tie in favor of the Democrats. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives is controlled by Democrats but is vulnerable to a midterm shift in power.

Both sides, in other words, are looking for ways to win on the margins. Brokering a compromise on the cultural wars may do the trick. And there is one area in particular where compromise is possible, and urgent: finding a balance between LGBTQ rights and religious freedom. To date, the conflict has been framed as a binary choice. LGBTQ-rights advocates argue religious freedom is merely a license to discriminate; people of faith assert laws that force them to violate their conscience are unconstitutional.

It’s zero-sum.

In partisan politics, we call these “wedge issues” — they force people to pick sides. But it’s a false dichotomy. There are ways to share space. It’s ultimately mutual vulnerability that pulls both ideological extremes away from their insistence on political purity and back toward sustainable solutions. Right now, the Equality Act represents an unyielding position on LGBTQ rights from Democrats. The bill would amend the Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, public accommodations, public education, federal funding and other aspects of life.

It has been a fixture in Democratic campaigns, and President Joe Biden touted his plan to enact it in his first 100 days.

Republicans have opposed the Equality Act because it nullifies many of the religious freedom protections afforded under U.S. law. The act, for example, eliminates Religious Freedom Restoration Act protections passed in 1993, representing a grave threat to religious expression for many believers.

Last Congress, the Equality Act passed in the House of Representatives. It was never taken up by the Republican Senate majority. The outcome of the 2020 election, however, left Democrats in control of both chambers of Congress and the White House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has symbolically numbered the bill HB5, which connotes its high priority. It will most certainly pass the House once again, and Biden has restated his commitment to pursue passage of the bill early in his term.

Only one obstacle stands in the way: the Senate.

Under current Senate rules, the Equality Act must gain the support of 60 senators to pass. There are only 50 Democrats. At least 10 Republican votes are required for passage. Given the negative implications for religious freedom currently part of the Equality Act, Republican support seems unlikely.

The political stalemate continues. And yet mutual vulnerability hovers in the future for both political parties, meaning this could be the moment when historic progress is made that supports people of faith and LGBTQ Americans.

The midterm elections are already on the horizon. Historically speaking, the party of the incumbent president rarely does well. During a time of economic turmoil and a pandemic, if Democrats aren’t careful, a loss of control of the House of Representatives is a realistic scenario. But Republicans, too, have vulnerabilities.

There are more Republicans up for election in 2022 than Democrats. And Republican senators feel worry radiating from churches, faithbased schools and universities and social service providers in their states who verbalize the devastating impact the Equality Act would have on their basic religious missions.

Mutual vulnerability is present. An environment conducive to a shared space solution exists right now.

Democrats know that the Equality Act must become a genuinely bipartisan undertaking, one that values the freedoms of all Americans. Then, and only then, could the Equality Act become a stable long-term legislative achievement of the same noble caliber as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, of which it aspires to form a part.

This could occur if 10 Republican senators are willing to support passage of the Equality Act in exchange for robust amendments ensuring core religious freedoms alongside the new protections for LGBTQ people. Democrats, in turn, must be willing to compromise. The question history awaits is whether this generation of lawmakers will have the wisdom and nobility to seize this moment to solve our culture war standstill.

Mike Leavitt is the former governor of Utah.

BY JESSE KATZ PHOTO ESSAY BY PASCAL SHIRLEY PILOTED BY ALEX FREIDIN/HANGAR 21 HELICOPTERS

Amarch ago, as the light faded on a clear and brisk Wednesday evening, I hailed century-old food hall downtown, sip sazeracs at a British chophouse-turned-Korean lounge, utes. So overwhelming was the toll, the coroner had to request that air-quality regulations be a ride to Guelaguetza, the landmark Oaxacan nibble rice cracker-encrusted asparagus in a suspended — to allow crematoriums to incinrestaurant in the heart of Koreatown, for dinner West Hollywood izakaya, or bob to the maria- erate more bodies. with my dear friend, filmmaker Eric Nazarian. chis in a 24-hour Montebello diner. There was a perception, back when LA was

As we worked our way through a kaleido- Or you used to — I did — and now you can’t. avoiding the worst of it, that our sprawl and car scope of moles, from the piquant rojo to the The pandemic has hobbled LA in heartbreaking dependence made us exceptional. But that’s a earthy mole negro, we shared our creative pre- ways: upended livelihoods, swamped hospitals, privileged swath. Nearly a million of LA’s 10 occupations — Eric’s afternoon of scouting lo- shrunken our world. As the late Jonathan Gold, million people are undocumented, most withcations at the Mar Vista housing project where LA’s Pulitzer-winning omnivore, put it after the out health insurance or sick leave, many douhe’d be shooting his next movie, my interview uprising of 1992, “the intricate framework” of bled- and tripled-up in frayed tenements and that morning with the survivor of a MacArthur our grand yet teetering city has again collapsed. bootleg garages in communities as dense as Park gang attack I’d spent months trying to The virus is our termite, exposing a fragile Manhattan. We have some 60,000 people exlocate. There’s a cellphone picture of us that periencing homelessness, the tents lining our night, grinning in the dining room’s golden parks and underpasses a humanitarian disaster neon glow: sated, flushed, unaware. that belies our image as 2028 Olympics host.

By the time we’d paid the check, we’d learned And if you scroll the public health department’s that the NBA had halted play, that Tom Hanks log of COVID-19 outbreaks, you’ll see what and Rita Wilson had tested positive, and that amounts to a map of working-class LA, from a this strange new virus that had been inching carpet manufacturer in the City of Industry to closer was officially here, altering life in ways a tortilla factory in the City of Commerce. we were only beginning to grasp. It would prove To have the flexibility to retreat, to remain to be a last supper of sorts, my final night out in solvent with only a keyboard and Wi-Fi conwhat has now been a year of limits and losses. nection, is a luxury. Still, it doesn’t change how

The Los Angeles I love is the LA others weird and disorienting LA has become for scorn: the city too vast and disjointed, too those who have spent this past year sheltering carved up by freeways and riddled with wrong and distancing, growing shaggy and adding turns to wrap your arms around, much less pounds. We feel woozy on our rare outings, embrace. Ever since arriving 35 years ago — a as if we’re all blinking away the fog from our sheltered Oregonian by way of an experimen- screen-addled eyes. We’re unmoored on the tal Vermont college — I’ve delighted in taking emptier roads, trying to recall familiar routes the boulevard less traveled. I’ve tested myself and decipher new traffic patterns. And we’re and trusted the city, endorsing uncertainty, structure and years of deferred maintenance. unprepared for the sensory dissonance: malls ignoring boundaries. Like stepping into Yayoi Despite some of the nation’s earliest and jammed, skyscrapers desolate, drive-thru lines Kusama’s “Infinity Mirrors” (which has mes- most stringent stay-at-home orders, we’ve endless, storefronts still boarded from a summerized crowds at The Broad), LA is where managed to shutter our haunts and ravage our mer of racial reckoning and an autumn of politThai Town meets Little Armenia, which abuts service industry only to emerge after months of ical apprehension. Little Bangladesh, which spills into the El self-abnegation as America’s latest COVID-19 The stupefying effects of life in a city on Salvador Community Corridor, which overlaps epicenter. By the time LA reached its one-mil- hold finally caught up with me on a warm, clear, with the Byzantine Latino Quarter. You can lionth positive case in early 2021, someone was glorious December day: time to get out of the hear live jazz in Little Tokyo, grab falafel in a dying here from the virus every five or six min- house. I proposed a hike in the San Gabriel

THE PANDEMIC HAS HOBBLED LA IN HEARTBREAKING WAYS: UPENDED LIVELIHOODS, SWAMPED HOSPITALS, SHRUNKEN OUR WORLD. OUR GRAND YET TEETERING CITY HAS AGAIN COLLAPSED.

citadel outlet mall, southeast la

Mountains, where Altadena meets the forest. It was a moderate 5-mile loop I’d trekked the previous holiday season with my son. This year he was homebound in New Orleans, so I guided my girlfriend’s son and his girlfriend — super fit young adults — up the trail, taking off at a brisk pace to show them I wasn’t as sluggish as I might have appeared.

About an hour in, the trail no longer recognizable, we came across a treacherously delicate chute of loose stone and parched earth that looked to be the only way forward. I can’t explain why we didn’t turn back from that rockslide — except that after living with so many barriers, I was loath to allow an obstacle to stymie our great escape. Scrambling like goats, gripping fistfuls of needle-nosed agaves to hoist ourselves several hundred feet up the crumbling slope, we eventually made it to a steadier but steeper outcrop. And there we remained frozen, hearts pounding and legs trembling, unable to go up or down.

I’d made a series of bad decisions, so it was time to make a good one. With the bit of cell service we could conjure, we called 911. A Los Angeles County Fire Department helicopter spent an hour probing the crags and arroyos before our heroic first responders spotted us waving like castaways on an escarpment. To my dismay, our predicament required a “hoist extraction” — the technical term for the shudder of fear that comes from seeing a dude rappel from a chopper hovering maybe 40 feet overhead with plans to scoop you up and launch you skyward. As the blades engulfed us in a cyclone of debris, we were strapped one by one into a harness (appropriately labeled a “screamer suit”) and cinched to the dangling cable.

When my turn came, I couldn’t even look. I just told myself that it’d be over soon, that no matter how long I remained suspended midair, no matter how visceral my dread, this too shall pass. Maybe that is everyone right now — in ways less dramatic for some, more perilous for others — each of us waiting to exhale, hoping to get our footing back.

When i met Jason, he was in his late 40s and living in the Midwest. If it were up to him, his full name would be printed here; he is done with secrets. But this is his mother’s story, too, and Jason wants to respect her privacy.

Growing up, Jason was raised mostly by his grandparents, with his mom and a stepfather in and out of his life. His mom wouldn’t talk about who his biological father was — not when she came to his high school graduation, nor when he was getting married. He was too young to understand, she’d say, or now wasn’t a good time.

Jason was in his 30s, a father with two young kids, when he decided to ask again.

A relative had recently died, and it occurred to him his mother might pass away without ever revealing the mystery of his paternity. In the pre-genomic age, he was at the mercy of what she and any other secret-keepers were willing to tell him. So, he wrote his mom a letter and put some teeth to his request: He told her that if he did not hear back, he’d start asking around; he’d heard some cousins might know some things.

It worked.

His mother wrote back with a name but little else. “Here is what you wanted, sorry it took so long,” she wrote. “I would just as soon leave as is.”

But Jason could not leave as is. He wanted to know his father.

News outlets try to one-up each other in quantifying the hugeness of Ancestry’s database of genetic data.

It’s “the world’s largest collection of human spittle,” a news organization observed back when the company had a mere 9 million people in its database. Now some 19 million people have taken an AncestryDNA test — more than half of the 37 million spit-kits sold by the five major DNA testing companies put together.

The pace of the company’s growth is fairly astonishing: It debuted its autosomal DNA test in 2012, several years after 23andMe. Yet it long ago outpaced 23andMe in tests sold, and this last summer, the private equity giant Blackstone announced plans to acquire a majority stake in Ancestry in a deal worth a hefty $4.7 billion. Twenty years after the emergence of DNA testing for genealogical purposes, we have become a nation of seekers — people who spit and scour their results for meaning, trying to understand ourselves better by knowing who we came from. Ancestry, with its compelling ads promising to “unlock your past,” is leading the way. More than a suite of services or products, however, in an age of estrangement Ancestry seems to be selling us a hope that we can fill our collective yearning to find our way home.

Meanwhile, Ancestry’s growing size and mission can’t help but draw scrutiny, especially as it pivots toward offering genetic testing for disease risks, eyeing a lucrative, long-term plan for what it calls “personalized, preventive health.” A few months before I visited the company’s headquarters in Lehi, Utah, during the summer of 2018, the McClatchy newspaper chain ran a multipart series on AncestryDNA. One article was headlined “Ancestry wants your spit, your DNA and your trust. Should you give them all three?” The company’s entire operation — the DNA testing, the family trees, the incredible treasure trove of genealogical records — is built upon reams and reams of intimate data — information that tells the stories of people’s ancestral backgrounds and genetic traits, not to mention the sacrifices, triumphs and scandals of their ancestors.

There’s a tension inherent in being such a big company managing the genetic information of millions of people. There is a tension between the truth that we are all from the same human family, 99.5% genetically identical to one another, and the idea that our differences can be parsed into pie charts. There’s a tension between my right to spit into a vial and have its contents analyzed by a private company and the right of my brother or aunt or first cousin not to have their DNA information known. And, as I’ve seen in interviews and correspondence with hundreds of consumers over the last three years, there’s a tension, too, between the idea that we can send in our saliva to find connection with family even as the results that come back can cause serious family turmoil.

To understand these tensions, it helps to trace the family tree of how we got here. Ancestry, as we know it today, began with two companies coming together.

John Sittner founded a genealogical publishing company called Ancestry in Utah in 1983; it produced genealogical reference books, as well as the Ancestry newsletter, which later became a magazine. Meanwhile, in 1990, two entrepreneurs from Utah named Paul B. Allen and Daniel Taggart founded a company called Infobases to sell religious and educational texts, first on floppy disks and then on CD-ROM. In 1995, Allen and Taggart moved into genealogy, licensing some of Sittner’s reference books and packaging them with family tree software and other resources into something called the LDS Family History Suite (LDS stands for Latter-day Saint, as in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. More on that later).

The company made a million dollars in less than half a year.

Allen told me that this was a breakthrough moment for him: To be sure, Latter-day Saints were more interested in genealogy than the average American, but still, they made up just a tiny fraction of the U.S. population. What was the potential for the genealogy market if he could broaden his audience? Realizing they needed a genealogically oriented brand, Allen and Taggart started buying into Sittner’s company, eventually coming to own it outright.

They launched Ancestry.com in 1996, offering genealogy hobbyists free access to the Social Security death index for their research needs. Allen started surveying online visitors to the site, asking them questions about what they’d spent on various genealogical endeavors over the course of a year. How much on reference books, family tree software, genealogical magazines, travel? What about on postage and photocopies? When he crunched the numbers, he realized his average visitor was spending more than $500 a year on this hobby. “This is a multibillion-dollar industry and nobody’s noticed it yet,” Allen realized. “Why don’t we digitize everything they’re spending money on and make it possible to do it all through one subscription?”

And so they did.

Jason told himself he was acting out of a desire to know about his dad’s medical history. But there was more to it. What he wanted, he knows now, was something deeper. He felt a hole inside himself.

“Like a yearning,” he says.

He wrote a letter to the guy named in his mother’s letter, who lived a few hours away, and the man responded. They forged an arm’s-length father-son relationship.

The man told him he’d dated Jason’s mother in college and he knew she’d gotten pregnant, but she’d told him the baby wasn’t his. The man was kind and polite, but he did not welcome Jason into his life, nor tell his adult children that Jason existed. Instead, once or twice a year, they went golfing together.

Once or twice a year for over a decade.

Trying to fit this stranger into the role of genetic father, Jason looked for likenesses. He seized on the fact that they were both the same height, both even-tempered and reserved. But the man did not offer Jason the sense of warmth or belonging that he was longing for, and Jason could not help but feel a mixture of gratitude and loss.

Ancestry’s headquarters can’t be missed. When I visited it in 2018, the huge, gleaming, modern structure of two connecting buildings had only recently been completed at a cost of $35 million. It housed about half of the company’s 1,600 employees. The lobby windows looked out on two majestic mountain ranges. It had been difficult to get permission to tour. Access to the building was tightly controlled, and visitors had to sign confidentiality agreements just to get past the lobby. To a visitor, Ancestry can seem almost omnipresent in the area. In addition to the headquarters, its customer service operation was 20 minutes away in Orem, while its team of professional genealogists, available for hire, were located 40 minutes away in Salt Lake City.

Once I was inside, I was met by Jennifer Utley, the company’s director of research and its longest tenured employee, who had been at Ancestry for over 20 years. When she started, the company had just established an internet presence, and Utley’s work was editing genealogy reference books and Ancestry magazine. Now, clocks on omnipresent video screens throughout the headquarters showed the current time in the company’s many offices throughout the world, including in San Francisco, Dublin, Munich and Sydney.

About 80 paid interns were eating in the cafeteria, just off the lobby, getting ready to do “speed dating” with executives so they could learn what it was like to work there. Utley took me upstairs, showing off artwork with a genomic theme: hanging pendant lamps inspired by the double strands of the DNA helix, and a massive, colorful bar graph representing the 15 principal biogeographical ancestries of 84 human populations.

Utley introduced me to two members of the content acquisitions team, who told me they travel all over North America to work with archival facilities, mainly at the state level, digitizing and indexing old records. In exchange for this, the company is given permission to place the records on its website so that its millions of paying subscribers can access them.

Allen, who left the company in the early 2000s, told me that one way to think about the brilliance of Ancestry’s model is to frame its genealogical product as the opposite of breaking news. “The value of the records increases over time; they don’t decrease over time,” he said. “Every year that goes by, more people are entering middle age, where they start to be interested in genealogy, and then they have children and grandchildren.” This means the birth record of a single ancestor from 1850, for instance, “is of interest to more people every year just because of aging and population growth.”

Utley showed me a cubicle where several different versions of the company’s DNA kit were displayed, customized for the more than 30 countries in which they were being sold. DNA testing at Ancestry works hand in hand with the rest of its business. If you spit into a tube, you’ll get your ethnicity estimate and relative matches, but only with a subscription will you gain access to most of your matches’ public family trees, or to genealogical records that might help you figure out where your mysterious Italian heritage is coming from.

And what’s more, sales beget sales.

AncestryDNA becomes a more appealing place to test as its database of customers grows, because people are more likely to find close genetic relatives there. We walked over to the area housing Utley’s own unit, which was responsible for researching and publicizing the genealogical discoveries made possible by the company’s resources. It was Utley’s team that uncovered that Emma Watson, who played the witch Hermione in the “Harry Potter” films, was in real life distantly connected to a woman convicted of witchcraft in 1592, and that Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Sherlock Holmes on TV, was very-very-slightly related to the author of the “Holmes” series, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. If you’re willing to extend the definition of “relative” far enough, the world of genealogy is full of kismet like this.

As we walked, Utley pointed out people who’d worked at the company for a decade or more. She told me she loved her work for the sense of mission it gave her. She said she felt like she was doing more than selling a mere product; she was changing people’s lives.

The idea of genealogy as a grander mission was a theme I heard a lot when I was in Utah, particularly when I drove to Salt Lake City, half an hour north of Ancestry’s headquarters, to examine one of the other major forces

behind the rise of our national obsession with family history. I went where so many modern-day seekers go in their quest to make sense of the present by examining the past. I went to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Family History Library.

“The greatest responsibility in this world that God has laid upon us is to seek after our own dead,” Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said shortly before his own death in 1844. The prophet experienced his first religious vision at the age of 14 on his family’s farm in western New York and founded a faith that eventually immigrated to Utah.

Smith was aware that the young religion had a problem when it came to the souls of loved ones who’d died before it was established: How could these people (including Smith’s own deceased older brother) be saved if they’d never had the chance to accept Jesus Christ’s restored gospel? Smith had a vision in which the Lord told him that death was no barrier to salvation for the soul of a person who would have received it while alive.

After that, he preached the doctrine of vicarious baptism for the dead (being baptized in place of one’s ancestor). In fact, church members came to believe that a series of practices were necessary for the fullness of salvation, and that it was a sacred duty to perform them on behalf of their ancestors.

By extension, then, genealogy became a kind of religious rite.

This helps explain the enormous resources The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has poured into the gathering and dissemination of old family records. In more recent decades, the personal computer and the internet, of course, made family history research easier and far more accessible to the average American, as well as an increasingly big business.

But FamilySearch is not a business. It’s the church’s massive nonprofit genealogical arm — free to everyone and dedicated to the idea that we’re all better off if we know our ancestors. Across the world, it maintains more than 5,000 family history centers, what journalist Christine Kenneally calls a “sacred municipal library system.”

In the Bible, there’s a line stating that before the “great and dreadful day of the Lord” God will turn “the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers,” lest the earth be smitten “with a curse.” In one of Joseph Smith’s early visions, he said an angel recited those lines, but instead of mentioning the curse, the messenger ended: “if it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted.”

Church members are not shy about citing this story, and its website FamilySearch.org aims to help you and me search more than 5 billion records to help turn our hearts. But there are some things you can find only in person at the church’s Family History Library, which is the biggest genealogical research facility in the world.

The place is astonishing. Inside, different floors house regions of the world. There are records from more than 120 countries, in more than 170 languages, including the largest collection of Chinese genealogies outside mainland China. There are hand-drawn pedigree charts from the Polynesian state of Tonga, and old and historical books with names like “Rural Cemeteries, New Canaan, Connecticut.”

Prior to COVID-19, seekers would line up outside before the Family History Library opens at 8 a.m. They had dolly carts and heavy bags filled with family photographs and document files. Paul Nauta, the library’s PR director, calls these the homesteaders, for the way they set up camp at particular computers and squat all day. They may be hobbyists or pros; they may travel as groups of genealogical societies, the better to swap stories and resources. Like modern pilgrims, they may come from far away — Canada, France, England, New Zealand, all over the United States — and park at the library for a full week. Sometimes, people planning to do just a little research stay far longer than they meant to, as if they fall into some kind of wormhole that alters time.

This place can do that to you.

It’s no coincidence that the church’s Family History wing and Ancestry are located in the same state. Even though the organizations have different motives — one pursues profits, whereas the other sees its work as a godly endeavor — they often team up, though they have no official financial relationship. Nauta described this as a necessity to collect and catalog the countless bits of information we human beings are forever churning out about ourselves — an effort without end. “Even collectively, we can’t do it all,” he said.

This revolution of information about the dead is breathtaking and makes you think about all the ways we’re giving up our privacy not only in this life but in the hereafter. Nauta told me he was bullish on the amount of information we citizens of the internet share online — he figured it would make the lives of future genealogists so much easier. “Can you imagine having just a week’s worth of Pinterest posts from your grandma?” he asked. I shuddered inwardly, thinking of all the things I’d posted on social media over the years.

But the concept of privacy has radically changed for all of us, even over the last decade, from what we share online to how faithfully our movements and shopping habits are tracked by corporations, to, yes, the very secrets of the genetic material curled into chromosomes in the center of our cells.

Why should the privacy of the dead be any different?

Members of the church I spoke with at the library had a profound sense of connectedness to the past. The 19th-century notion of knowing one’s ancestors as a moral endeavor was alive in them. But that yearning isn’t unique to Latter-day Saints, especially these days, when technology has made the lives of our forebears so much more accessible. Nauta observed that DNA testing has lowered the age of people interested in family research and has brought in new seekers through a different door — people who tested first and then became interested in genealogy.

That was the case for me. I’d tested at 23andMe in 2017, after my dad gave me a kit for the holidays, as so many Americans do these days. The test made the past — previously a kind of black box to me — seem closer and more relevant than it ever had before. In short order, my family was connecting to relatives we’d never known existed, relatives who, in a few cases, held the keys to better understanding some of my forebears three and four generations back. We wound up taking a trip to Sweden to meet some of my newly discovered relatives, see the place where my dad’s grandmother had grown up, and understand the poverty and familial instability that no doubt contributed to her decision to emigrate to America at the age of 16. This decision led, of course, to the existence of all of us.

This context for her life and mine was like a gift.

Jason’s questions about the past were far more pressing than the casual curiosity that prompted me to take a DNA test. His understanding of his father’s identity was deeply meaningful to his own. He told me later that his tepid relationship rooted in an occasional golf outing was what eventually drove him to do a DNA test, in hopes that scientific proof would actually help improve his relationship with his dad. He wanted to be claimed by this man; he wanted to stop feeling like a secret.

So, at the urging of a genealogist friend, Jason bought an AncestryDNA test.

That’s how Jason discovered he had the wrong guy all along.

His purported father wasn’t in the database, but that didn’t matter. Jason’s genealogist friend came over and, looking at Jason’s list of genetic relatives, swiftly traced Jason into a totally different family, as the likely son of one of three brothers. In my reporting, I encountered a number of stories like Jason’s, stories in which mothers would not or could not talk to their children about how they’d come into the world.

Perhaps they did not know who the father was — and how could they tell their children that?

Perhaps the circumstances surrounding the conception had been traumatic, had involved coercion or violence. The questions brought back shame or anger or an experience too private to share. They brought back a world in which a pregnant teenager was whispered about and shunned.

DNA testing brings old taboos to the fore, secrets that are like the proverbial snowball rolling down the hill, getting bigger and heavier with each passing day. They often pit an adult child’s desires to know the truth about his or her genetic origins against the privacy interests of parents, prompting fraught conversations and, sometimes, rifts within families. These are either the costs of undoing a secret or they are the costs of the secret itself. DNA testing is the messenger about truths long obscured.

Only later did Jason look back and see how, in his long relationship with the man who was not his father, he’d been forcing the facts to fit a narrative. He had searched for resemblances between them. It was a testament, he realized later, to how badly he wanted this kinship.

“You’re going to find commonalities with anybody,” he says. In one sense, then, Jason’s account is a rebuttal to those who believe that DNA testing emphasizes genetic ties over other family bonds. After all, Jason found value in what he thought was a biological bond long before he could prove it with a test. Consumer genomics simply told him he was wrong.

When Jason handed the man a letter at their next golfing session, 12 years into the relationship, he watched his would-be father’s face move through shock and confusion. The man looked up. He told Jason that he was relieved. For 12 years he’d carried the guilt of believing he’d unknowingly abandoned a child. Now he knew he had not. And he said he was sad — “Anyone would be proud to have you as a kid,” he told Jason, who cried when he repeated these words to me.

The man’s words were balm to the sense of shame Jason had felt since he was a child. Jason went home and once again wrote a letter, with three copies for three brothers, informing them that one of them was his father. The letter had ripple effects — one brother said his wife had learned about it, and it was causing problems in his marriage — but it turned out to be a different brother who claimed Jason. When, at last, Jason met this man at a restaurant, he did not need to search for resemblances.

The man’s eyes were “like looking into a mirror.” The man was warm, gregarious, funny. They sat and talked for hours. The man had asked Jason for an old photo of his mom, and he recalled knowing her briefly. He told Jason he already knew they were father and son, though he agreed to do the paternity test Jason picked up at Walgreens. They sat in an SUV outside a post office and swabbed their cheeks together, then sent it off.

Within a week, the test confirmed their relationship. Suddenly, Jason had a whole brood of brothers and sisters, several of whom lived nearby, and they all got in touch to tell him how happy they were to meet him.

That first Christmas, Jason’s new family insisted he and his wife and kids join them, and it was the beginning of holidays together, and summer weekends, and talking on the phone, and visits to see one another’s kids’ in their plays and recitals.

Jason’s wife told me Jason had changed in the years since finding his father. He had become a more confident person. The hole was filled.

Jason’s story isn’t necessarily typical — revelations about old family secrets can just as often lead to family fissures, rejections and fraught relationships. One man I know of deleted his genetic information from a database rather than acknowledge his relationship to a biological daughter; another involved his attorney in telling his adult child to cease contacting him. But Jason’s experience is a hopeful example of what can happen when things go right, and it is what seekers looking for their genetic kin dream of. It is the dream of being accepted, of belonging, of being able to incorporate into one’s life both kinds of family — the relatives a person was raised with and the relatives a person discovers well into adulthood because of a DNA test.

In the hundreds of interviews and conversations I’ve had with people who discovered something unexpected about themselves through a test, the overwhelming majority were grateful for that truth, even when the circumstances were painful, simply because they had the truth at last. And this search for self through better understanding of the past, of one’s genetic inheritance and one’s living kin, is a large part of what powers the industry of recreational genomics, not to mention the seekers who line up early outside the Family History Library, or subscribe to Ancestry’s vast stores of genealogical archives. Privacy concerns can seem far off and abstract compared to the immediate reward that knowledge about one’s biological origins can give.

“My wife said it was a dream come true, and it was — being welcomed,” Jason told me, thinking back to that first Christmas and starting to cry again. “And nobody was ashamed, and everybody was happy, and it was a great thing.

note: Portions of this essay were adapted from Libby Copeland’s book “The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are,” which is released in paperback this month.

ALONG A STEEP, DUSTY PATH, Bill Wright reaches a flat enclave THE FIRST FAMILY OF RODEO of red dirt and scattered rock. In the distance, soaring sandstone walls jut Back in the ’70s, Bill nearly pursued a career as a rodeo cowboy. He won a into the glowing evening sky. Up here, among the pinyon pines and sage, few local contests in his teenage years. In fact, a belt buckle he still wears it’s quiet. Serene. Almost eerily so. every day came from an all-around title he won at a high school competi-

On a clear day, the horizon stretches some 60 miles south, all the way tion. Right around the time that he and his wife, Evelyn, lifelong Latter-day into Arizona. Bill’s pretty proud of that — and rarely misses a chance to Saints, were sealed in the Manti temple in 1973, he had saved $4,000 to say so. “I still love the scenery and the beauty,” he says, looking out into pursue a full-time rodeo life. Then Evelyn came down with appendicitis, the arid Eden stretched before him. “I get more attached to it the older and he spent half of it on her treatment. With his savings drained, he had to I get.” choose ranching or rodeo. Ranching was what he knew, and what he chose

Bill, now 66, calls this the best view in Utah. It draws him back again — even if it contributed to the bills more than it paid them. and again. He often comes up here with tourists on horseback. And when Since then, he’s supplemented ranching by breaking horses and pouring time allows, he comes up alone. It’s this spot — among the thousands of concrete, among other odd jobs, while Evelyn, now 64, works as an eleacres he grazes cattle on Smith Mesa, along the western border of Zion mentary school teacher. Her job has given their large family access to inNational Park — where he hopes, one faraway day, to be buried. surance — which they’ve needed since their sons picked up the sport that

What gives this place its siren song, even though he’s been up here hun- Bill left behind. Evelyn and Bill’s oldest son, Cody, discovered Bill’s old dreds of times before? “Oh, I don’t know,” he says. That’s his preferred rodeo saddles and inherited his fascination, starting with Little Britches way to start any answer to any question, his Rodeo in the mid-’80s. Cody stuck with it and voice deep and syrupy. “Some people don’t understand why I love to be alone out here so much.” But the peace, the silence — he’s known THE VIEW became the first in a long line of Wrights to make careers of competitive cowboying. Inside Bill and Evelyn’s home, framed newsthem since he was a boy, since he started coming out here with his dad. The view from here doesn’t change. At least it hasn’t yet. The Pine Valley Mountains tower above 10,000 feet to the west. In the east, the FROM HERE DOESN’T paper and magazine clippings exploit every pun of the family name imaginable — “Wright Stuff,” “Wright Place and Time,” “Wrighteous Win” — and posters of all the boys in their chap-covered denim decorate the hallway. It jagged cliffs of Zion rise over a grassy, golden valley, as they always have. Bill’s dad, Cal, homesteaded just southeast of here. His grandpa Wright homesteaded to the northwest. And his great-great-grandpa, Joseph Wright, homeCHANGE. AT LEAST IT feels more like a shrine than a dwelling. Bill even has a practice arena out back, an oval of chain-link fence held up by rusted white poles. The practice arena is mere steps from the local hospital, for good reason. steaded 10 miles away in what’s now called the Wright Meadows in the 1800s. He was the first of Bill’s pioneer ancestors to call this area, HASN’T YET. Cody now has metal rods in both his legs. His youngest brother, Stuart, has been airlifted to the hospital twice. And Cody’s oldest son, tucked under the sheer 2,000-foot red-rock Rusty, can hardly choose his worst injury. He formations of the Kolob Canyons, home. Six generations later, the family recalls the bull that stomped on his chest as a high school freshman, the is still here. Bill quietly hopes that his grandkids will be the seventh. collapsed lung, the punctured lung, the broken sternum, and the “bunch

If they choose to be, that is. And if a whirlwind of evolving legislation, of” fractured limbs before finally settling on the compound fracture he a transforming economy and a changing culture allows them to be. Like suffered in 2016. That one happened when his foot got caught between many families across the rural West, the Wrights are trying to hold on his butt and his saddle, and his lower left leg snapped and folded over, to an increasingly rare way of life — and a family ranch — as American foot-to-knee. That one hurt his wallet just as much as his leg. To make a progress presses on. living, rodeo cowboys need to compete. There are no salaries in pro rodeo

Smith Mesa might not stay in the family much longer. Developers and — only prize money. conservationists make regular offers. Signs crowd the winding road from The goal for any rodeo cowboy is to make enough money over the the I-15 exit at Toquerville to nearby Virgin, advertising hundreds of acres course of the season to rank among the top 15 in a given event, which earns for sale. And tourism seems poised to replace agriculture as the area’s them an invite to the annual National Finals Rodeo. The NFR is a 10-day dominant financial force, if it hasn’t already. “When I was a kid, you’d event with a high-paying rodeo each night. If a cowboy makes it there, he come up here for six weeks and wouldn’t see anybody,” Bill says. “Now, can multiply his yearly winnings several times over with a few good rides. you can probably see 30 to 100 outfits per day in late spring.” For example, the 15th-ranked saddle bronc rider entered the 2020 NFR

Bill has the best view of Utah and of these clashing forces. The ceaseless with $52,303 in regular-season earnings. One first-place finish at the NFR tide of development and the traditions of his family ranch battle and tug would earn him $26,231. The cowboy who ends the year with the most at him from beneath his brown boots. To think, just 50 years ago, he flirted money in each event wins a gold buckle. with going a different direction. Prize money is what the Wrights do best. Cody won his first saddle

PREVIOUS PAGE LEFT: FROM THE ZION WRIGHT FAMILY RANCH, THE CLIFFS OF ZION JUT INTO VIEW IN THE WEST. THE RANCH IS LOCATED JUST EAST OF THE PARK. PREVIOUS PAGE RIGHT: CODY WRIGHT, 43, WAS THE FIRST WRIGHT TO WIN THE WORLD SADDLE BRONC TITLE. HE’S USED HIS RODEO WINNINGS TO INVEST IN THE HERD, OF WHICH HE OWNS HALF. RIGHT: BILL WRIGHT TRAVELS DOWN THE DRY WASH ROAD ABOUT ONCE A WEEK, USUALLY BY HORSE, BUT SOMETIMES BY TRUCK.

bronc gold in 2008, then again in 2010. His success allowed him to invest to place it and secure it just tight enough. All three wear the same blue in the ranch. He now owns about half of the herd. That’s taken some pres- snap-button shirts they always compete in. Perhaps the blue snap-button sure off Bill, who’d endured some rough years on the ranch before Cody shirts are a result of Wright family superstition. It’s more likely that they came on board. Another of Bill’s sons, Jesse, won in 2012, and another — are simply — like much else — tradition. Spencer — won in 2014. Bill’s grandson, Ryder, catapulted the next gener- Stetson opens with a 91 out of 100 in saddle bronc. He’d already had the ation of Wrights into the spotlight by winning in 2017, and Ryder’s broth- all-around title just about locked up, but his score punctuates his domier, Stetson, followed him by winning the 2019 all-around cowboy award nance. Bill, still at his spot along the fence, hardly moves. Rusty finishes — rodeo’s top prize — given to the cowboy with the most earnings across with an 86.5, good for fourth in the world saddle bronc standings. Ryder’s multiple events. But so far, they’ve invested their earnings elsewhere. up last. He just needs to stay on, avoid disqualification, and he’ll cruise to

Today, the Wrights are the most decorated saddle bronc-riding family in another saddle bronc title. With his left hand on the chute and his blue eyes the world. Their triumphs have landed them an appearance on “60 Min- tucked under the brim of his hat, he mouths the go-ahead and completes utes,” a book by Pultizer-winning New York Times writer John Branch, a masterful eight-second ride. His 91-point score ties with Stetson as the and more prizes and buckles than they could possibly count. That success round winner, and he’s still panting to catch his breath during his postride makes the Wrights better situated than most interview. His final earnings total $320,984.16, family ranches in the West, but better is relative. Bill still worries about losing what has long kept “IT’D BE TOUGH TO good for the saddle bronc title. Down the rightfield line, Bill uncrosses, then recrosses his legs. his family rooted here to forces he can’t control. Family farms are dying, and have been dying for a long time. American agricultural infrastructure has shifted toward commercial, large-scale farms, which drive down prices for consumers LEAVE. THE ONLY CONSOLING THING WOULD BE WE’D About an hour later, Stetson mounts his bull. Eight second later, he hits the clay, stumbles, pops right back up, stretches his arms wide, and points toward the crowd. His 89 squeaks out the win in bull riding by just over $12,000, while driving smaller operations like Bill’s out of business. The economics just don’t add up FEEL LIKE WE’RE giving him two gold buckles and prompting the Cowboy Channel announcers to call him the as they once did, leaving families scrambling to hold onto whatever pieces of their careers, their cultures and their sense of self they can grab. Rodeo, as a competitive mirror of ranching tasks, is BETTERIN’ OURSELVES.” brightest young star in pro rodeo. Bill watches the awards with Rusty. Finally, he claps. Down in the right-field bullpen, the contestants gather for photos with their winning one option. And for the Wrights, it’s been a life- buckles and saddles. Most of the crowd is gone, line. “Rodeo’s been important,” Bill says, “for them guys to keep up that save for a handful tossing programs and hats at the competitors for autolifestyle.” The 2020 NFR illustrates just how important. graphs. The official photographer requests a family photo of the Wrights, so all 28 of them crowd into the camera’s lens. They spill outside the pair BULLS ON A BASEBALL DIAMOND of gray sheets that are hanging as a background, jostling for position and Dust fills Globe Life Field and fogs the lights as Stetson Wright emerges trying to make sure everyone can crowd in without spilling over the sides from the locker room. He’s one among three of Bill’s grandkids compet- of the makeshift background. They can’t. “We’ll just get three backing tonight. Because of the pandemic, the 2020 NFR relocated from Las grounds next time,” the photographer jokes. Vegas to Arlington, Texas, at the home of MLB’s Texas Rangers. Stetson’s It’s moments like these when it all seems to work, when it feels like their spurs jingle as he stomps through the curdled orange clay in what would Western lifestyle will endure forever. But even the family’s rodeo success normally be left field, his eyes invisible beneath the brim of his black hat. isn’t an antidote to the larger forces working against them — and famTonight, he could win his second all-around cowboy award as well as his ilies like them — in the rural West. Few are as elite as the Wrights, and first bull riding title. His brother, Ryder, is on the verge of his second sad- top-level success is difficult to sustain in a decidedly unforgiving sport. dle bronc world title. And their brother Rusty is also competing; he can’t Yes, rodeo helps preserve the culture, but what good is that if the culture win a buckle, but a good ride could mean another $26,231. Here to watch it’s preserving vanishes into nothing but a Western trope? “By embracing is their grandpa Bill, who stands along the right field line, where he’s sta- rodeo without embracing the realities of ranching, we’re printing the legtioned as a gate attendant. His pose — legs crossed, arms crossed, leaning end,” Paul Starrs, distinguished professor of geography emeritus at the on the fence — rarely changes, and he almost never claps. “You’ve gotta University of Nevada, Reno, says. “And we’re not paying attention to the smile out one side of your face,” he says. “And cry out the other.” Transla- day-in and day-out, year-in and year-out, decade-in, decade-out ups and tion: No matter what happens, you can’t get too high or too low. downs of livestock ranching.”

With their eight-second opportunities approaching, the three Wright boys begin working on their saddles. Their teams resemble NASCAR pit BIG GOVERNMENT, SMALL RANCHES crews. They secure the “flank rope” — a strap that runs under the horse’s A few days later, back at Smith Mesa, Bill’s white GMC truck hums down a abdomen and makes the horse uncomfortable, causing it to buck more graded ribbon of uneven dirt that cuts through brush and rock. He calls it vigorously. All three adjust buckles and tweak the saddle location, trying the dry wash road. Part of the reason Bill hasn’t seriously considered selling

PREVIOUS PAGE: CODY WRIGHT, 43, IS SEMIRETIRED FROM RODEO AND SPENDS HIS DAYS WORKING THE RANCH OR TRAINING CATTLE DOGS. THREE OF HIS FIVE KIDS COMPETE IN RODEO PROFESSIONALLY. HIS SON RYDER IS A TWO-TIME SADDLE BRONC WORLD CHAMPION, AND HIS SON STETSON HAS TWICE WON THE ALL-AROUND COWBOY TITLE, THE HIGHEST HONOR IN RODEO.

is because he’s worried, given the land’s proximity to a national park and they allowed livestock ranchers, at the very start of the 20th century, to various conservation agreements, that he’d unwittingly get dragged into a use public lands,” Starrs says. “A lot of those public lands were pretty badly lawsuit and lose whatever money he’d gain in the sale. He’s always said he’d abused by ranching. They basically grazed it to the nub.” Which is why only sell if the family would be better off in the aftermath, but that’s more nowadays, the federal government only allows a certain amount of grazing subjective than he’d like it to be. How does one weigh the memories of the on a certain amount of land — to prevent complete environmental depast against the promise of the future? “It’d be tough (to leave),” he admits. struction. But this creates a fundamental tension, Starrs says. If we know “The only consoling thing would be we’d feel like we’re betterin’ ourselves.” grazing is a bad use for the land, why does it continue? On the other hand, Some of the family’s operation has already shifted away from Smith how can you take away land given to ranchers more than 100 years ago? Mesa. Branding day — a de-facto family reunion held every Memorial And where does giving land back to Native American tribes fit into all of it? Day — used to take place at Smith Mesa. Now it happens up in Beaver, Bears Ears, an undeveloped swath of public lands in southeastern Utah where the herd of 200 to 270, depending on the time of year, spends the surrounding a towering pair of buttes that resemble bear ears, was dessummer. Traditions, lifestyles, cultures — better to preserve them than ignated as Bears Ears National Monument by former President Barack land, Bill says. But that doesn’t make the prospect of leaving any easier. Obama in 2016. The designation pleased environmental groups by offer The truck bounces and bobs along the bumpy road, the chassis ing extra protection for the land, but it worried local ranchers. The desigsqueaking as the front dips into a small hole. “Oooh-wee,” Bill says. His nation of a national monument under the 1906 Antiquities Act gives the great-great-grandfather, he explains, ranched cattle along this very same president the power to ban grazing. It rarely happens (grazing remained in road. The herd is spread across 20,000 acres in this area. But only about place at Bears Ears), but more federal oversight is a non-starter for ranch1,200 acres actually belong to the Wrights. Everything else is public lands, ers who’ve grazed the land for decades, and they fought back. Less than loaned to Bill for grazing via a mix of federal and a year later, former President Donald Trump state leases. This kind of arrangement is common for Western ranchers, and government “THERE’S A LOT THAT reduced the size of the national monument by 85%. And President Joe Biden, on his first lease prices are generally fair. But the land isn’t theirs, so ranchers live with the possibility of the government refusing to renew their leases, or deCOMES WITH BEING A RANCHER TODAY AND day in office, began the process of reassessing the boundaries of Bears Ears once more. The ongoing controversy raises the heart of the decreasing their allowed herd numbers because of drought or conflict with an endangered species. “One of the things ranchers hate, more than anything else,” Starrs says, “is unexpected change.” YOU’VE GOT TO HAVE MONEY bate: Who should control public lands? Ranchers, on one hand, can’t sustain their livelihoods without them since the West is largely federal property. On the other hand, public lands are The federal government owns large swaths of Western states. In fact, the government owns FOR IT. supposed to belong to everyone and reflect what Wallace Stegner called the “geography more than half of all the land in Nevada, Utah, RANCHING DOESN’T of hope” — the unspoiled condition through Idaho, Alaska and Oregon. The idea of west- PAY FOR RANCHING.” which wilderness rejuvenates and inspires. ward expansion became ingrained in the time of “Laws have reflected the values of all AmerThomas Jefferson. Conquest, Native American icans — not just those few Americans whose displacement and — eventually — agreements like the Louisiana Pur- great-great grandfather happened to have settled here,” says Tom Butine, chase and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo created a “new frontier” that board president of Conserve southwest Utah, “and taken the land away the government enticed white Americans to settle under the banner of from Native Americans.” Manifest Destiny. The Homestead Act, passed in 1862, offered 160 acres The push to make Bears Ears into a national monument started with of government land to anyone who promised to either settle or cultivate Native American tribal leaders seeking to protect their ancestral homeit. But in the arid, mountainous West, a lot of land isn’t suitable for farm- land, rich in archaeology and history, from damage by settlers. Bill’s ancesing or settlement — which left it unclaimed and under federal control. tors homesteaded on land most recently occupied by the Southern Paiute Some, however, made use of it by grazing their cattle in the wide-open tribe, which was nearly wiped out by 1880 due in large part to interaction spaces. But despite its reputation as a ranching paradise, the American with pioneer settlers. The tribe has regained a foothold in recent years, West actually isn’t very suitable for grazing, either. “The land is so margin- though, and perhaps someday its leaders will stake a similar claim to the al,” says Starrs, who adds that the Southeast actually has the best climate land around Zion. Or perhaps the federal government will decide to exfor ranching. “In Florida, you can graze a dozen cows and calves on an acre pand the borders of Zion National Park and push Bill out. of land, pretty much year-round. In eastern Nevada, it’s not uncommon to need 640 acres to graze one cow and one calf year-round. So the ratio ZION WRIGHT FAMILY RANCH, OPEN FOR BUSINESS of productivity in Florida versus eastern Nevada is tremendous.” Bill continues down the dry wash road. He approaches a cliff’s edge and

Despite the delicate ecosystem’s natural inability to support livestock, peers out the window toward the canyon below. “We gotta get some rain these canyons and desert plains were once a rancher’s paradise — in terms or snow,” he mutters. It’s the driest stretch he can remember. Less water of lagging oversight. “They were pretty profligate about the ways in which means Bill must spend money to supplement his cattle’s consumption. It

also throws off birth rates, making the herd’s numbers less predictable. ucation over rodeo or ranching; he was also the only of Bill and Evelyn’s And that’s on top of the economic forces already squeezing him out. “The children to serve a mission — two years in Ghana. “I knew school had to number of livestock ranchers — whether it’s cattle, sheep or whatever — come first,” he says, “and the same with my service to the Lord.” Bill also is down,” Starrs says. “The third son and the fourth daughter are not in- serves a mission of sorts. A recovering alcoholic, he’s a group leader for a terested in ranching, and neither are the first and second and third.” 12-step recovery program at his ward. Been doing that for three years. He

Indeed, small family farms — those that make less than $350,000 in admits he’s strayed from his godly obligations at times during his life, but yearly revenue — accounted for 89.6% of all American farms in 2019, per he’s proud to say he’s found his way back thanks to his family. They’re althe USDA, but only 21.5% of production. Large family farms — those ways around to help, he says, with religion, ranching or anything else. “It’s that make over $1 million annually — and commercial farms, meanwhile, kinda like having Christ in your life,” his son Calvin observes. “There’s accounted for only 5.1% of farms, yet 57.4% of production. As farming always someone right there.” and agriculture have modernized and moved toward new technology and For now, though, finding a Wright willing to take on the next generation increased efficiency, smaller operations can’t keep up. Cattle ranchers of the ranching responsibilities hasn’t been a problem. Yes, many have left in also have more competition from cheap foreign beef flooding the market search of making their own way, and yes, some aren’t interested. But enough largely unabated, leading to (fruitless, so far) campaigns to require coun- are to keep things humming as Bill tries to usher the ranch into the future. try-of-origin labeling. And with financial opportunity beckoning else- “The Wright family is … just a perfect example of this: They’ve diversified,” where, the kids of the Wright family have followed the money. Starrs says. “They realized that just raising cattle would work for some real-

Running the family ranch once offered ly big operations, but very few of them.” a chance to make a stable living using skills passed down from parents to children. But “BY EMBRACING In 2018, Bill opened Smith Mesa as a tourism business venture. At Zion Wright Family now, the economics no longer make sense — especially for a small-scale operation like the RODEO WITHOUT Ranch, $35 buys a night of camping in the grassy meadows and $99 gets you two hours of horseWrights’ combined with their large family. Bill and Evelyn have 13 kids, 42 grandkids and 15 great grandkids. Their oldest, Selinda, was a prison guard with a criminal justice degree who planned to become a lawyer until health EMBRACING THE REALITIES OF RANCHING, WE’RE back riding guided by Bill himself. It’s a somewhat crude addition — the signs welcoming visitors are hand-painted in white on plywood, with Bill’s personal cell number sketched onto the sign just outside the horse corral. But out problems sent her off course. Cody did rodeo, invested in the ranch, and trains competitive PRINTING here, the crudeness adds to the charm, and the new venture has been a major boost. “It’s cattle dogs. Laurelee is a dental hygienist in St. George. Calvin shoes and breaks horses as THE changed things,” Bill says. “I’ve probably done as well on that as I have on my cows.” a ranch hand for families all over southwest Utah. Monica is a custodian. Michaela teaches kindergarten. Alex used to ride broncs and LEGEND.” Due to the pandemic, 2020 in particular was a boon. Business tripled. But many of Bill’s clients come from California, and when Calipour concrete but now works for his wife’s fam- fornia locked down, business nearly collapsed. ily’s ranch up in Oregon. Jake recently bought a hog farm near Milford. That’s one reason why he’s not eager to turn Smith Mesa into a dude Jesse worked on an oil rig; now he rides broncs and does construction for ranch. Cattle, he’s long believed, are more reliable than people. his father-in-law. Spencer rides broncs, pours concrete and does leatherwork. Kathryn, who lives in Montana, is also a dental hygienist. Becca is WHERE TO NEXT? into photography and works at a day care. And their youngest, Stuart, is Not far from the “best view in Utah” is a place Bill calls Lee’s Lookout. on his way to becoming a nurse. Twelve out of the 13 went to college in Legend has it that John D. Lee, of Mountain Meadows Massacre infamy, search of economic opportunity and independence that can’t be found hid out nearby while authorities searched for him. He’d climb up to this working the family ranch. “I didn’t really feel that our family’s ranch is lookout every day, Bill explains, to scan the horizon for the law’s approach. gonna be a long-sustaining thing,” Stuart says. “With as many people as Bill loves to talk about the legends of his Latter-day Saint heritage, of “Ol’ we have, there’s not enough room for everybody.” Porter” and “Ol’ Brigham.” He hopes future generations of Wrights will,

Heck, hardly for anybody. Which is why Stuart thinks his best path to too. The question is whether tradition alone will be enough to weather preserve his Western way of life — an important goal to him — is through the forces of development, conservation, tourism and finance converging a nurse’s salary. “I do wanna have my own property where I can have my at Smith Mesa. own horses and a little bit of cattle,” he says. “Me and my wife decided we Bill’s no prophet. He can’t say what’ll happen next. He can’t say what’ll wanted to go into nursing because it pays for the lifestyle. ... There’s just a become of this breathtaking landscape. And he surely can’t say if the family lot that is entailed with being a rancher now, and you’ve gotta have money ranch will live on past him, though he surely hopes it does. There’s a reason for it. Ranching honestly doesn’t pay for ranching.” he often answers questions by starting with “I don’t know” — he doesn’t.

Stuart is a bit of a trailblazer in the family. Not only did he look to ed- No one does.