President Dallin H. Oaks: What a Daughter Learned from Her Father
By Maurine Proctor · October 15, 2025 | Original Article from Meridian Magazine
The Lord prepares his prophets long before this life and carefully and exquisitely molds their lives on earth to prepare them in specific ways for the heavy responsibility they receive. As God said of Jeremiah, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5).
So it was with Jeremiah, Joseph Smith, Russell M. Nelson, and so many others, and so it is with Dallin H. Oaks, who became President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints this week. As you look at his life, you can see the Lord’s shaping hand upon it.
Like his seatmate for 40 years in the apostleship, Russell M. Nelson, President Oaks’ talents, leadership, and brilliance are proverbial and simply staggering. A seed of striving for excellence grew in him from his earliest days, and time and again, through an entire lifetime of achievement, he performed wisely and well.
He attended law school at the University of Chicago, where he was editor-in-chief of the law review. He was a law clerk for Chief Justice Earl Warren of the U.S. Supreme Court, practiced law privately for ten years, and then in 1971 was named President of Brigham Young University, where he served until 1980. Then, with hardly a moment to catch his breath, he was invited to serve on Utah’s Supreme Court.
Twice, he was considered by U.S. presidents to be nominated for the Supreme Court. That wasn’t to be because in 1984, he called to be a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. The Lord had known his son, Dallin Oaks, from the beginning.
Speaking of being perfectly trained for a position of spiritual power, starting in 1971 when Dallin Oaks became president of BYU, he began working with the Presidents of the Church, and of the 17 who have been called in this final dispensation before he was called as the 18th, he had worked closely with eight of them, which is more than half.
What President Oaks was Like at Home
These achievements are all public marks of a life well-lived, but what was he like at home, in all those thousands of private moments with his family? We asked his daughter, the renowned violinist, Jenny Oaks Baker, to share what it was like growing up with Dallin H. Oaks.
She said, “I am so grateful for the upbringing that I had. My parents were amazing. I had so much love and direction.”
Jenny was the last of six children, and she said, “I was born 13 years after the rest of my siblings, who were all married by the time I was six. That meant I was almost raised as an only child. I am so grateful for all that extra time and attention I was able to have with my parents.
“I had dinner with my parents every single night. Everything else stopped and we sat around the table together. It was a sacred time. So many of my life’s lessons were learned around the dinner table or when we were driving somewhere. My parents taught me gospel principles and testified of the Savior. They took the opportunity to create teaching moments.”
A Culture of Work
One of the gifts she inherited as President Oaks’ daughter was the love of work. It was in his nature to strive for excellence and to give the most rigorous study and effort to any responsibility. This was not because he was eager to shine, but because in his heart he was eager to serve and wanted to be a polished instrument for the Lord to use.
President Oaks’ first talk as an apostle reflected this, “I will devote my whole heart, might, mind and strength to the great trusts placed in me, especially to the responsibilities of a special witness of the name of Jesus Christ in the world.”
Finding meaning and excitement in work was a value Jenny learned at home that propelled her to focus, from her earliest years, on the violin. She began studying at age four and by the time she was a teenager, she was practicing four hours a day. This wasn’t forced on her but came as a natural response to the responsibility she felt to work as hard as possible to develop her talents so she could use them to build the Kingdom, something she’d seen so clearly in her father.
“In my family, the value of ‘work first, play later’ was instilled,” said Jenny. “Sometimes we joked that it was ‘work first, play never’. My Dad loves to work. He values productivity and so do I. I’ve never felt like he wished he had more free time to spend relaxing or recreating. He is truly invigorated by finishing meaningful projects from organizing the storage room to writing family histories to finishing a talk.
Supportive of Jenny
She said, “Dad has always been so supportive of me developing my talents. Growing up, my Mom practiced with me, but Dad always left his study door open when I was practicing. He didn’t have time to practice with me, but he wanted to hear me play as he worked.
“Of course, he can’t come to most of my concerts now, but when I ask him and his sweet wife Kristen to come to really important performances for me or my children, they are there. My Dad has always been so busy, but family has always been his top priority.
“When I perform, he’ll smile, put his hands together and shake them in this cute little ‘hip hip hooray’ gesture to congratulate me. He has always been so supportive of me in all the best ways.”
“I didn’t realize how little we recreated compared to most families until I grew up, but I don’t feel like I missed out on anything —this work ethic has truly blessed my life,” Jenny said.
It’s this same work ethic and striving for excellence that propelled her to become an accomplished violinist and help her children learn the value of work through developing their own musical gifts.
“I’m so grateful I have been able to instill that value of diligent work that I inherited to our children. That legacy has allowed us to do incredible things together. Every family is different and bond in different ways, but because we worked really hard, we have been able to bond performing on stages around the world. The Spirit teaches every family how to bond and create a culture that is important to them.”
What the Gospel is Worth
Jenny said, “Nearly every moment growing up was testimony-building. My father’s father taught him: ‘If the gospel is worth anything, it’s worth everything’. I am so grateful my parents raised us to walk the covenant path.”
“My parents used my musical talent to help build my testimony. Before every performance, we’d kneel down and pray that I would do my best, and then I’d see Him blessing me. I always knew Heavenly Father would answer my prayers, that I could turn to Him, that He would strengthen me and enable me to do hard things. I knew that I had a Heavenly Father who loved me because I had an earthly father who really loved me.
“I am grateful that my parents intertwined my music with the Lord. I can never talk about music without talking about my faith. That is how I was raised. Our gifts are from God. He wants us to develop them and use them to serve others and build His kingdom.
Wading to the Fishing Holes
When the Oaks family did recreate, Jenny’s father loved fishing. “He would be in his waders, and when I was a little girl, he would have me climb up on his back, and he would wade across the river so I could be a part of fishing in the best hole. He taught me how to hook a worm. It was his one recreational time, and he still took me along.”
President Oaks’ Spiritual Qualities
Jenny remembers her father “as always reading his scriptures. They are so marked up. He was always busy doing the Lord’s work. He took no time for himself. He never wastes any time because he wants to give himself fully to the Lord’s work. He’s just a very dutiful servant.
“He is very careful to never lose the Spirit. You would never want to say or do anything around him that would take the Spirit away, but he’s also jovial. He has a quick sense of humor. He makes everybody want to be at their best when they are around him. He’s a judge by career, but he’s the least judgmental person I know and that’s because he’s a true disciple of Jesus Christ.”
Once, years ago, while my father was still in the legal profession, two neighbors were litigating against each other and one of them asked him to informally come and help with the legal issues. “I think they expected him to get actively involved as a lawyer, but instead my Dad was a peacemaker,” said Jenny, “so that in the end, no lawyer was needed because he helped them come to a peaceful agreement.”
Jenny also commented on his integrity calling it “absolutely stellar,” a quality that is tangible to us all as it seems to so securely emanate from him. “I admire everything about my Dad, especially how he is honest in all his dealings. His integrity goes beyond just telling the truth. He is absolutely trustworthy in every way. He has integrity in ways most of us have never even thought of. He will always do and say what the Lord will have him do and say, even if that occasionally makes him unpopular with some people. He is just on the Lord’s errand, no matter what. He will do what the Lord wants him to do, come what may. He has incredible, admirable priorities.
“God would have us all be perfect in our integrity and if we are following the Spirit, we can have perfect integrity, too,” Jenny notes.
“My father has incredible foresight. He has this gift to see ‘if this, then that will happen.’ It’s a gift a prophet, seer and revelator really needs.”
A Gifted Storyteller
Jenny and her family used to live in Virginia, but moved back to Salt Lake in large part to be close to her Dad and his wife Kristen. “We live close enough to have them over for dinner a few times a month. I feel so blessed that my kids have grown up having the same special experiences with my parents around the dinner table that I grew up with.”
“He is the best storyteller,” she said, “and he has so many funny ones to tell.”
She also says he has many one-liners. He is aware of the value of people’s time and quips, “Don’t magnify your calling with other people’s time.” Or he laughs, “I have had a lot of problems in my life, but most of them never happened.”
Called as a Prophet
Now with her father’s new calling as Prophet and President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jenny says, “I know that my father is very aware of everything that is going on in the world, but he remains calm. He has faith in the Lord, and knows that the Lord is in charge and therefore everything will work out, so he doesn’t stress out or wring his hands. He just works as hard as he can and leaves everything up to the Lord.
“I have already seen the Lord sustaining and strengthening my father in incredible ways. He walked so quickly into General Conference that it looked like he was on a moving walkway coming in and out. I thought, ‘Wow, Dad, look at you go!’ He is being totally sustained by the Spirit and it is remarkable to watch. It is a beautiful thing to see his having been prepared for a lifetime and strengthened so much now.”