Meet 96-Year-Old Primary Teacher Delpha Baird

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By Mary Richards, Church News

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Delpha Baird is 96 years old and still tirelessly and lovingly serving in Primary in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

At the beginning of teaching her class of 7- and 8-year-olds in the Holladay 10th Ward, Salt Lake Holladay Stake, on Sunday, May 31, Baird asked, “Why are we in Primary today?”

Duke Kingsford answered, “To celebrate Jesus.”

Baird helped the children turn to Judges 3 to discuss that week’s lesson from the Old Testament. As they read verses and talked about the choices the children of Israel made, Baird asked the class, “What choices can you make to follow Heavenly Father today at your age?”

Avalyn Anderson raised her hand and responded, “We get baptized.”

Baird discussed with the class about the choices they will continue to make as they grow up and testified that the Lord would bless them as they followed Him.

“I have had a wonderful life, a happy life. I lived close to the Lord and did what He asked me to do,” she told them.

The class was riveted as she told them about when her late husband, Steven T. Baird, was asked to oversee the Church Building Program in Europe in 1960. She described praying constantly as they took their six little children — including a new baby — across the United States for four days on a train, getting everyone in a taxi in New York City, then boarding the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner to cross the Atlantic Ocean, finally arriving in England nine days later and figuring out where to go next.

“The only thing that helped me get through this hard time was Heavenly Father,” she said. “I knew He would bless me.”

For several years now, Baird has taught the class of children turning 8 and preparing to be baptized, said the ward Primary president, Kristen Van Tienderen.

“She comes to every baptism; she’s so sweet about it,” Van Tienderen said. “She really inspires such a strong testimony of Jesus Christ. I think her sustained enthusiasm, being 96 years old, is so inspiring and just amazing.”

Holladay 10th Ward Bishop John L. Lunt said about Baird: “I can’t properly express what a blessing she is in our ward. Sister Baird is truly amazing. She is so loved by all.”

Greeting her in the hallway after Primary ended, he told her, “You have blessed generations of Primary children in the Holladay 10th Ward. We are forever grateful.”

‘A Whirlwind of a Life’

When Baird looks at the children in Primary, she thinks about how they have no idea what is ahead for them. “I didn’t,” she said.

Born in 1930, Baird grew up in Brigham City, Utah, in an adobe house with no indoor plumbing. Through her teenage years, she was determined to learn the violin, sewing to earn enough money, and walking or riding the bus to lessons. When she earned a scholarship to the University of Utah, it was in music and dance.

There she met her husband, and they were sealed August 20, 1951, in the Salt Lake Temple.

Later, the family included eight children, and they lived in Nauvoo, Illinois — “50 feet from the Mississippi River” — where her husband supervised restoration building for the Church. She and her husband later served as Church public affairs missionaries in the Philippines, fulfilled an inner-city mission in Salt Lake City, and served as NGO (nongovernmental organization) envoys to the United Nations in New York City.

While in England, Baird served as the Epsom Branch Primary president. Later in life, she served for eight years on the Primary General Board, now known as the Primary General Advisory Council, from 1977 to 1985.

“Wherever I go, I’ve been in Primary,” she said.

In the 1990s, Baird ran for a Utah state senate seat and won, focusing her efforts on education and children’s issues. She has worked in the temple for 50 years and attends weekly, continuing to live in her home after her husband died in 2011.

It has been “a whirlwind of a life,” she said.

Van Tienderen said: “It feels like she truly has put her life in the Lord’s hands, knowing ‘He’ll help me do this.’ She hasn’t lost sight of that. And it’s not despite challenges and hard things — she’s gone through all the hard things.”

‘The Adoptive Grandmother’

Van Tienderen and Bishop Lunt hope Baird’s story can serve as an example for Church members who think they may be done serving, or for ward leaders who may not be thinking of all the members of their wards when considering callings.

Said Van Tienderen, “It blesses us so much to have these older people too.”

Karin Wallace is Baird’s current Primary class co-teacher.

“I just love being a team teacher with Delpha,” Wallace said. “She loves the children with all her heart, strength and soul. She testifies of the Savior every week and how keeping on the covenant path is the only path for true happiness.”

Josh Brothers, whose daughter Phoebe is in Baird’s class, said, “Everybody knows Sister Baird. She is the adoptive grandmother of every child in this ward, even the ones that are grown and have served missions and everything.”

She is also the first person to stand up in fast and testimony meetings on fast Sundays, Brothers said. “Phoebe wants to bear her testimony on Sunday because Sister Baird bears her testimony every month.”

When Baird was invited before singing time on Sunday, May 31, to say a few words to all of the ward Primary children, she told them: “You have wonderful lives ahead of you. The Lord will bless you and help you to do whatever you want that is good.”

Again and again that Sunday — to the full Primary, to her class and to the Church News, Baird testified of Jesus Christ and of His help in her life.

“The Lord blessed me.”