Tanner Humanities Center

Obert C. & Grace A. Tanner

Obert Clark Tanner was born September 20, 1904, to Annie Clark and Joseph Marion Tanner. Obert’s father, exiled to Canada because of his practice of polygamy, was a fading presence in the life of his son. From an early age, Obert assumed responsibility for contributing to the support of his mother. She, in turn, instilled in him a profound respect for intellectual pursuits and the value of human freedom.

As a boy, Tanner learned habits of hard work on his uncle’s farm, on railroad and construction crews, and in a lonely season herding sheep for his father in the Canadian Rockies. Despite reservations about his ancestral faith, he served a mission for the LDS church in a Germany recently devastated by the First World War. His soul-searching attempts to balance faith and reason and to reconcile human potential with human suffering led him to lifelong interest in the example of Jesus Christ.