The Hill Cumorah Legacy Project

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Part of Interview with Dwight Schwendiman, Saturday, April 30, 2022

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Interview with Dwight Schwendiman
Saturday, April 30, 2022
The Hill Cumorah Legacy Project
Recorded over Zoom
Interviewee: Dwight Schwendiman
Interviewer: Daniel Gorman Jr.
Duration: 37:22
Transcription App: Otter.ai
Transcript
[00:00]
Dwight Schwendiman: Got it.
Dan Gorman: Today is Saturday, April 30, 2022, after a very busy semester. [laughs] My name
is Dan Gorman, and I am speaking to Dwight Schwendiman about the Hill Cumorah Pageant.
Good afternoon, Dwight.
Dwight Schwendiman: Good afternoon.
Dan Gorman: And we are speaking over Zoom. I am in Rochester; you’re in Utah.
Dwight Schwendiman: Yes.
Dan Gorman: So, to begin, Dwight, how did you become involved in the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints? Did you grow up in the Church? Were you a convert?
Dwight Schwendiman: I grew up in the Church. My father was from southeastern Idaho, and
my mother was from Salt Lake.
Dan Gorman: Mmm. And what was your career, [or] is your career?
Dwight Schwendiman: My career? I did graduate work, was a research chemist for ten years
with Eastman-Kodak Company in Rochester, New York, after which I switched over into
computer systems and was involved in the development and—the carrying it out to the different

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plants of computer software that was used for the manufacturing of film and paper products. But
I was involved both in the development as well as the training on that.
Dan Gorman: And working at RIT and going to school at the University of Rochester, I am well
acquainted with Kodak. [laughter]
Dwight Schwendiman: [laughing] Although it’s a much smaller company now than it was when
I was there.
Dan Gorman: It is, but we have lots of buildings named after Kodak executives and Eastman
this and that.
Dwight Schwendiman: Understandable [best guess].
Dan Gorman: So, Dwight, how did you first learn about the Hill Cumorah Pageant? Do you
remember roughly when that was?
Dwight Schwendiman: Um, probably my first experience with Pageant was about 1957. My
parents had relocated from Utah and Idaho and were—I grew up in Illinois, and we usually came
west to visit family, but in ’57 we went east to see some of the historic sites in the East. And one
of the things we did was stop and see the Hill Cumorah Pageant. And the only thing that I can
remember of that was sitting on planks that were on cement blocks that had been set up as
seating, much more crude or … [indistinct] [than] was at the time later, when I was involved.
Dan Gorman: Seeing the Pageant that early in the 1950s, and then being involved in it on and
off for another—almost 60 years, you were privy to the script changing over time. What do you
remember about the show back in the ’50s?
Dwight Schwendiman: Frankly, at that point, very little, but where I can start to say
remembering things... We moved to Rochester in the ’70s, and so the script in the ’70s was
pretty much the same as was in the ’50s, as I understand the history of it. In the mid-’50s, the—

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there was a recorded soundtrack that was recorded and played, with the characters on the hillside
pantomiming to the soundtrack. In the late—in the ’70s, that was pretty much the same.
Costuming started to change about that time, and by the late ’80s, a very significant change had
been made in the costuming. The Pageant talks about two different groups of people [in] the
American—the ancient Americas, between approximately 400 AD and 1000—or, one—400 BC
and 1000 AD, and one of the groups of people were nomads and hunters, and so the costuming
for them got into furs and antlers and things like that, where before [05:00] … eh, what I
remember are more head scarves and tunics and short skirts for both men and women.
Dan Gorman: And during this period where you lived in Rochester [and] had opportunities to
see the Pageant evolving, what kind of roles did you hold in your local ward or stake?
Dwight Schwendiman: Up until—from [the] mid-’70s until late ’80s, the types of things that I
was involved with was either security on the Hill, keeping people from going into restricted areas
where the cast was, or primarily it was parking cars [unclear—“in the back”?], and those got to
be interesting experiences, especially when it was raining. We tried to move the cars in and out
so that everybody had a chance to move, and you weren’t just sitting there, waiting through the
front half of a lot to leave while you’re in the back. And I remember, one night, I was—I’d
stopped—stepped between two cars so that I could get another line of cars to go out. And the guy
who is—who I’d just stepped in front of, leaned out his window and said, “I’m with them; I
don’t know where I’m going,” and put his bumper right up against my legs! And I said, “Okay!
You can go.” And [laughs] I let him go, and I got around behind him. And everybody else after
that was kind of happy, just wait[ing] for their next turn. So [laughs], you meet all kinds of
people.

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Dan Gorman: And, aside from the Hill, too, I was thinking even about your local ward in
Rochester—did you hold any leadership positions?
Dwight Schwendiman: I did. In the late ’80s, I served as a bishop of one of the congregations.
[A] bishop is a lay leader, the lay minister for the congregation. Later, in the ’90s through—from
about 1994, to 199-—er, to 2003, I was in what’s called the Stake Presidency, which is the
administrative group of men who supervise a dozen or so units of the Church. So, I had different
opportunities to serve in leadership positions.
Dan Gorman: Before we started this interview, you mentioned that, during the 1990s, you had
an opportunity to be—you and your family—to be cast members in the Pageant. Would you like
to talk about that experience?
Dwight Schwendiman: Uh, yes. In 1998 [sic; 1988], the script for the Pageant changed. So, we
were there that very first year. And part of—and not only was there a new script, but a whole
new staging. And, where before there had been wooden stages at different places on the hill, it
was the new staging; it was fiberglass and aluminum, fiberglass gratings on top of aluminum
[trades?], going up the hill, seven different stages. And you had to be careful going across them
because, if you fell, the fiberglass grating could do a job on your knees and your legs. Over the
years, rubber matting was put over them. The grating was used, and then the matting had holes in
it so that, if it rained, the water would drain down, and it would not puddle on the stage.
In ’88, my family and I were cast members. We were all over the place in different—
doing different things. And we—my family and I were in one of the very last scenes of the show.
The following year, that scene was taken out because it didn’t fit. It just didn’t flow with the rest
of what it [the Pageant] was trying to do. And so, they [10:00] stopped at an earlier point, after
telling of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, the Prophet Joseph Smith, instead of

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bringing it up to [the] modern day, they just kind of stopped at that [best guess]. And then, in
’92, ’94, and ’96, we participated three more times. In each Pageant, my wife and I were what
were called cast team leaders. Part of that responsibility of being cast team leader is the—if
you’re not in rehearsal, you had to be doing something. And so, the cast was broken down into
groups of about 20—20 to 30 people, either by age group or—for the older couples, it was by
marriage groups, and the cast team leaders were responsible to organize programs or activities
that the cast members would be involved in when they weren’t rehearsing.
Dan Gorman: We’ve spoken to a few other people who were cast team leaders or who have—
had fond memories of their groups. One of the things that people have mentioned is that the
different cast teams, some of them would be split up by age group. So, which years of
participants would you work with? Young people? Older people?
Dwight Schwendiman: Uh, the very first year, in ’88, we were responsible for—I think they
were 11-year-old boys. And these are boys who had never had cast teams before. Most of them
were children of staff members, and they’d already been at the Hill for a week to ten days, and so
they were used to being able to do whatever they wanted, and wherever—go wherever they
wanted. And to have a couple of adults (who really didn’t know what they were doing) try to be
responsible for them, uh, it caused for some—some tensions between us. By the end, things kind
of worked out, but at the very beginning, it was tough. And then, we were camping in the
campground just north of the Hill, and so my wife was up there most of the time, taking care of
laundry and cooking meals for the family, and I was left alone with these dozen or so boys. And
I was told once that I was the only person they’d ever met who didn’t like being part of the Hill
Cumorah Pageant cast.

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Later, when we came back, we were with adults—adult couples—and that was much
more pleasant for my wife. Plus, we were not staying in the campgrounds. That made it easier for
her.
Dan Gorman: One other thing that’s come up is that some participants would commute from
their homes. Others, as you said, would stay at Zion’s Camp. Others would bunk at local college
dormitories that were —
Dwight Schwendiman: Yes, yes.
Dan Gorman: Rented out. And I’m curious, within the population of the cast, was there any sort
of a sense of competing identities? Like, “We’re the Zion’s block!” “We’re the dormitory
block!”
Dwight Schwendiman: Those who were not in Zion’s Camp always wanted to get it there,
either to be part of the campground or to join after the production because they considered there
was too much fun going on in the camp. And one of the things that were—was done was that,
every night, between the end of the show and before a “lights out” was signaled, everybody
buddy would get together in the pavilion and share food. And—particularly the teenagers who
were not in Zion’s Camp wanted to get in because that just seemed to be a lot of fun. Later,
during the time—when I was President of the Pageant, to reduce that competition, we started to
do the same thing down at the local college dorm. And that was able to be done for a couple
[15:00] of reasons. One was we—for years, many years, going back into the ’80s, the Pageant
cast had stayed at the college dorms at Hobart and William Smith College[s] in Geneva. Well, in
about 2010—2009, 2010—the local bus company—school bus company—that the Pageant had
used for years, to provide transportation back and forth, was bought out by a company in
Rochester. And not only—and the prices went up significantly. They didn’t want to leave their

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buses out on—at the Hill, which had always been done before. They wanted the buses driven
back into Rochester, into their bus barn, and so prices went up.
And two things then happened as we looked. Could we reduce cost? One was, the Finger
Lakes Community College in Canandaigua had just opened up some dormitories, which they
made available to groups in the summer to rent out. And so, the Pageant was able to contract
with the college to use their dormitories there. One very positive part of that was the rooms were
air-conditioned, which they were not back at Hobart and William Smith. And secondly, by doing
that, we were able to contract with the Canandaigua School District, who had their own school
bus fleet, to use their buses and their drivers to provide the transportation. And so, that reduced
the cost of the buses as well as the cost of the college. And being so much closer, we got our cast
back to their dorms much earlier, so therefore it made it easier for them to have some kind of a—
an ice cream social or some kind of snack, mix-and-mingle type of activity before they went to
bed.
Dan Gorman: Speaking as someone who had very positive experiences with [the] YMCA’s
Model Congress,1 those sort of experiences where students are exhausted and pushed to their
limits, but having a wonderful time—those become important bonding moments, I think.
Dwight Schwendiman: Uh, they really do! They really do.
Dan Gorman: So, you mentioned a few moments ago that you eventually joined the Pageant
Presidency in addition to being a cast team leader, a cast member.
Dwight Schwendiman: Yes.
Dan Gorman: How were you called to be in the Presidency?

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The YMCA Youth and Government or Youth in Government programs for high school students.

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Dwight Schwendiman: Okay. I was called and asked to be the President the same way a bishop
or a Stake President is called to be a lay leader in the Church, or someone within a ward is called
to be a Sunday School teacher. I was sat down; I was interviewed. I was determined—my
worthiness as a member of the Church was determined. And I was at least—initially, I was asked
to be a counselor, so that I could learn what was involved to be a Pageant President. And the first
year that I was involved in leadership action, I served as the counselor who was responsible for
facilities, which meant getting the buses that would bring people back and forth, arranging the
colleges, getting the dormitory set up, making sure we had Port-a-Potties [laughs] at the different
places where we needed to be. So, those—having me responsible for security, parking—so, those
kind of facilities, activities, I learned that. The other counselor in the Presidency of three was
responsible for the cast teams that we’ve talked about: what happens to the cast when they are
not rehearsing; [20:00] the devotionals; we would have joint meetings with everybody in the cast
two or three times today; and the—more of the spiritual aspect of the Pageant, where I was the
physical aspect of the Pageant. And then, after one year, I became President.
Dan Gorman: In that role—which I believe you said you held it from 2006 to 2015?
Dwight Schwendiman: Yes.
Dan Gorman: In that role, how much communication did you have to have between the
communities around Rochester and the Church headquarters in Salt Lake City?
Dwight Schwendiman: During the year, it varied. Particularly into the fall, when we were
getting ready to select our cast for the following year, and there were quite a number of phone
conversations back and forth. And then, it was quiet for a period of time. And then, as we got
into late April into May, things started to … warm up again as we got ready for people who
arrive in Palmyra to join the cast.

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We had—our director, during that period of time, was on the faculty of Southern Utah—
now, what? Oh, I can’t think of the name of the university, and they’ve just changed it. Oh, it
was called Dixie College in St. George, Utah, and they changed it to—just recently—to Utah
Technical Institute of Utah, Utah Technical Institute, or something like that. There was a feeling
that this “Dixie” had connotations of [the] Civil War, whereas the southern part of Utah, when
the Mormon pioneers first came to Utah, because it was warm and it was dry, they referred to it
as “Utah’s Dixie,” for the southern part. Anyway, he [the Pageant director] was on the drama
faculty at the university, and he would have his staff of directors. Probably three-quarters of
them were from Utah, and so we would be in conversation quite a bit, and he would be in
conversation with Church headquarters. That’s on purpose [best guess].
Dan Gorman: As this Utah leadership came in, was the director Rodger Sorensen?
Dwight Schwendiman: Um, I came in just after him. Brent Hanson was his name. Brent had
been the technical director at the same time that Rodger Sorensen had been the dramatic
director—drama director—of the Pageant. And so, Brent’s responsibility was to make sure that
the stage got up, that the lighting crew was trained [and so forth?], that kind of thing. And then
he became the artistic director in 2005, I think it was. 2006 may have been his first year.
Dan Gorman: So—thank you for correcting me—so, as Brent Hanson became the director, and
he brought in assistant directors from Utah, did you find that bringing in more Utah leadership
changed how the Pageant felt? Did it change any of the contents?
Dwight Schwendiman: [sighs] No, not really. Because there was a given script, a given
soundtrack, the—what was said was the same year-to-year. The music was the same year to year.
What changed was how you presented the actions. Perhaps the actors were focused on the
northern side of the stage, or maybe they were on the southern side of the stage. And each time

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you made a change like that, people who would sit in different places would get different
impressions of the show. I can remember, [25:00] during rehearsals, I’d go, and I’d sit at
different places in the seating area. I’d go sit on the south; I’d sit on the north; I’d sit up front; I’d
sit at the back. And the show was the same everywhere I went. I just saw different things!
Because I could focus on different things, depending on where I was.
We had—one of the things that we tried to do was to cater to the hearing-impaired. And
we would position them in a place where they were fairly close to the front, and then we had an
interpreter stand in front of them, with the light on the interpreter, and they would sign what was
being said in the narration. And one year, this woman, who was the—responsible for making
sure they had people there each night to do the signing, said, “We’re having a problem, because
we’re not seeing this one part of this one important scene. Is it possible for us to move here or
here? Or what can we do so that our people not only can hear, but they can see what’s going on
on the stage? And so, we brought the directors out, and we did some moving around. And we’ve
made a—we made an adjustment of where we’re putting them. And they’d been in that position
for years. But she came and said, “We’ve got a problem.” And we—so, we tried to fix it.
One other thing that we did was that we had a lot of Hispanics, particularly from New
York City, come up to view the Pageant, and they were non-English-speaking. And so, we had a
copy of the script written in—transcribed in Spanish. And we had someone who was seated to
the side of the seating area with a microphone, and he or she, depending on the evening, would
read the script in conjunction with what was going on onstage. So—and we had headphones—
sets for our Hispanic guests, and so that they could hear and understand. That was, by and large,
the only—those are the only two groups that we made special arrangements for. Although, one
year, we received a request from leadership in New York City saying we were bringing a—they

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were bringing a group of native Chinese out, and was it possible to have the script translated in
Chinese? And I don’t remember exactly how we made that happen. But we did. And working
with the technical people, we found the place where we could put one person, and they were
actually listening—rather than having something they could read, they were listening and
translating as they were hearing the English script.
Dan Gorman: And I think those stories reflect how the Church is becoming an increasingly
global institution.
Dwight Schwendiman: Yes, it is. Yes, it is.
Dan Gorman: As we come to the end of our time, is there any other memorable story, good or
bad, you’d like to share from your experience in the Presidency?
Dwight Schwendiman: Um, I don’t remember if I was just—if I was just an audience member
or if I was in the Presidency. One of the questions I was frequently asked was, “Does—was the
show ever rained out?” And the answer is, yes. Over the 75 years that I am aware of, or I will say
from the 50-—from [the] late ‘70s till now, I would say maybe a half a dozen times in that 50
years [30:00] was there a rainout, and not very many more times prior to that, although the
Pageant was not shown during the three or four years during World War Two because of the
need to be dark at that time.
But, anyway, we would go live, even if it was raining, light rain, and there—and then
there’s this one scene in the Pageant where the—it tells the story of this family [Lehi and his
family] as they are journeying from the Jerusalem area in the Middle East over to the Americas,
and they have to build a boat, and while they’re on the boat, there’s a storm. And the technical
people had arranged so, [at] the top of the mast, there was a sprinkler head that would send water
all over the stage so that, as you’re sitting back in the audience, you’d get the impression of a

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rainstorm. And then they’d have lightning strikes and thunder and various things. Well, this one
particular night, it had been raining, and not a heavy rain, but it was raining, and it got to that
scene, and the rain onstage came on, and as that particular scene ends, one of the prophets—one
of the leaders of the people—kneels to pray and asks God to still the storm, to stop the storm,
that they might continue their journey in peace. And, of course, the technical people would turn
the water off, and the water would turn off on the stage. Well, on this particular night, not only
did the water turn off on the stage, but the rain across the whole seating area stopped. And this
lady sitting behind me said, “Now that’s a special effect!” [laughs] And I thought to myself,
“Yeah, that is, that is.”
But we had a lot of fun. And a lot of things. There were other times where we’d be on,
and … it’d be dry, and then the rains would come, and we’d have to clear the stage quickly, and
nobody was ever injured in that regard. There are many things I could tell you, but that’s
probably the—to me, that’s the most fun one, that lady [who said], “Now, that’s a special
effect!”
Dan Gorman: My final question for you, Dwight, is if you have any comment about the Pageant
ending, and the way that it did, having to be canceled because of the pandemic.
Dwight Schwendiman: Well—yeah. Uh [sighs], we understood that it needing [sic] to be
canceled because of the first year of the pandemic. That was—that did not cause grief in my
family. The plan was—we had moved to Utah by this time—and we were planning that next
year, since it was going to be done, well, we’ll skip one year. Even though the Church pageants
were being canceled that particular year [in 2020], they [the Church leaders] said, “We’ll skip
the one year [2020] so that we can have a final performance [in 2021].” And we—my wife and I
decided we’d drive back so we could—our neighbor across the street, for the 44 years that we

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lived across the street from her, she’d always turned down our invitation to go out to see the
bank. But then, just as we were getting ready to leave, she says, “Oh, I want to see it!” But we
couldn’t; that was the year—COVID year—so it was off. We made our move [to Utah], and we
said, “We’ll come back, and we’ll take you].” And then, it got postponed that second year,
canceled the second year, and they [the Church] said, “That’s it. We can’t delay the changes
we’re going to make at the Hill any further.” And so, that was a disappointment that we were not
able to get back that one last time and see it, but particularly to take her.
But being out here [in Utah], we did have the privilege of participating in a special
devotional for the history of the Pageant, and I was asked to give the opening prayer for that
[35:00] devotional.2 And Brent Hanson, Neil Pitts—Neil was the President at the time it shut
down—one of the other directors, and one—I’m blanking on the name—someone else spoke.
We were there. And then, Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles gave
the concluding thought [best guess], to bear tribute to the—all the people who’d been in the
Pageant. And what we didn’t realize until he started speaking is that, as a teenage boy, back in
the ’60s, that he and his brother had come up and been cast members in the Pageant. So, he had a
tie there that we didn’t understand, but we were able to be a part of that. And then, that
devotional, after it having been recorded, was then shown Church-wide, and the last filming of
the Pageant was then broadcast, and so we were able to see it together with friends out here. And
that brings a few tears to my eyes suddenly [best guess], the thought of that.
Dan Gorman: I watched that program, and it was clear, the emotion put into it, although I do not
remember what you said. I can go back and watch it now. [laughs]

2

A full (and possibly unlicensed) recording of the Commemorative Devotional is available on YouTube. See
Captain Trox [pseud.; YouTube username], “Hill Cumorah Pageant Devotional,” produced originally by the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, July 2021, YouTube, uploaded July 28, 2021, https://youtu.be/CzNxhbYKVzg.

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Dwight Schwendiman: [laughs] Well, I’m a few years older than I was at that point in time, and
my only fear was that, in going from where I was seated up to the podium to pray, I was afraid I
was going to trip over my feet and fall on my face. The one benefit of that, though, was that,
because it was being recorded, they could have re-recorded it without my tripping and falling on
my face. So, it all turned out well.
Dan Gorman: Well, thank you so much for sharing your memories and your expertise on the
Pageant with us.
Dwight Schwendiman: My pleasure. I could talk for hours.

Dublin Core Metadata for the Interview
Title: Interview with Dwight Schwendiman, Saturday, April 30, 2022
Subject: Hill Cumorah Pageant, Kodak, American Sign Language, Spanish, Cast, Costumes,
Security, Parking, Dormitories, Zion’s Camp, Devotional, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints
Description: Dwight Schwendiman is a retired research chemist and computer specialist who
worked for Kodak. He first attended the Hill Cumorah Pageant in 1957 during a family vacation
to LDS historic sites in the eastern United States. As a resident in the Rochester area, Dwight
saw the Pageant change over time. He helped with logistics such as parking, led cast teams as a
cast member in 1988, 1992, 1994, and 1996, and eventually served as Pageant President from
2006 to 2015. During this interview, Dwight also discusses his experiences in these different
roles, Zion’s Camp and the Pageant dormitories, and the 2021 Church Internet devotional
celebrating the Pageant’s history.
Creator: Dwight Schwendiman and Daniel Gorman Jr.
Source: The Hill Cumorah Legacy Project
Date: Saturday, April 30, 2022
Contributor: Daniel Gorman Jr.
Rights: Produced under an oral history collaborative deed of gift agreement with no restrictions
and nonexclusive license.

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Format: M4A (audio), PDF (transcript)
Language: English
Identifier:
•
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Gorman_DwightSchwendimanInterview_04-30-2022_audio_1786524089.m4a
Gorman_DwightSchwendimanTranscript_04-30-2022.pdf