How my Father-in-law’s Great-grandfather was Excommunicated

Quince Rufus Pack at age 94 in 1952 remembers his life:

My dance hall was used by the people for any of the public dances, parties and so forth that they had. One night Fred Robinson had his wedding party and dance. Some of the fellows brought some liquor with them and really made a drunken brawl out of the party.

Two or three days later the Stake President came to see me and told me that if I didn’t quit selling liquor in my dance hall they would have to discontinue holding M.I.A. in my building. Now, I didn’t sell liquor in my store and like I said those fellows at Fred Robinson’s party brought their own. I tried to explain that to Lewis Pond, our Stake President, but he was angry and so was I and before long we were really having an argument.

Stake Conference was held the next Sunday, and he told the people not to trade with me at my store or to use my “den of iniquity” for their dances. My trade dropped off suddenly and for a long time the only times that people bought anything in my store was when they didn’t have money and needed credit.

One by one they began to come to my store again, and when a school house was started, I was feeling kindly toward the people, and, besides, I knew that my grandchildren would need a place to go to school, so I donated a twenty-dollar gold piece and a keg of nails. The Bishop, who was in charge of it, agreed not to hold any public dances there but would allow the people to come to my dance hall again. Of course, I could see why they wanted an opening dance in the school but when they held another one the next week and another and another and another in the next month or so I got a little mad and went to the Bishop and asked him if he had forgotten about our agreement and all he could say was he was sure sorry he had ever made that agreement because he just couldn’t let good people come to me and my house of evil and confusion where I was supposed to be selling liquor.

Well, I am only human and this made me awfully mad and I went to the Stake President again and told him that if he didn’t tell the people in the next Conference that I didn’t sell liquor in my place that I would start selling it the Saturday after Conference.

Conference came and went without him telling the people, I guess it was his pride that kept him from admitting he was wrong about the liquor. I waited the agreed week and then I began selling liquor and it wasn’t long until it was a thriving business even in our Mormon town. I kept a respectable place even if I did have to kick a bunch out now and then.

A good many of my regular customers at my store kept coming and soon nearly all of them were getting their supplies at my store.

My wife and I were quite bitter, and when the Stake President wouldn’t tell the people that I didn’t sell liquor in my place, I apostatized. It wasn’t until two years after she died that I realized the fight I was having was not with the Church but with a few people, so I was baptized again on November 8, 1930. When I look back on the time of the quarrels and the time when I wasn’t in he church and the things I didn’t teach my children about the church I see that those are some of the things I regret.