Alma Sonne

Alma Sonne was a General Authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was sustained as one of the first five Assistants to the Twelve in May 1941. When the position was discontinued in October 1976, he was transferred to the First Quorum of the Seventy. His service is unique in that he served as an Assistant to the Twelve during the entire time that the calling of Assistant to the Twelve was in existence.

Sonne was born on March 5, 1884, in Logan, Utah. He studied banking and finance and graduated from Brigham Young College in Logan. He joined the Logan First National Bank in 1906 as a cashier and eventually became president. He helped found and develop the Pioneer Bank of Logan, was a director of the Bear River Mutual Insurance Company, president of the Utah Bankers Association, chairman of the Utah State University Board of Trustees, president of the Logan Rotary Club, and vice president of the Logan Chamber of Commerce.

Prior to his calling as a General Authority, he served as a bishop’s counselor, a high councilor, and stake presidency counselor and later president of the Cache Utah stake. As a young man, he served in the Great Britain mission. Sonne and his companion, Fred Dahle, had completed their mission and had booked passage on the Titanic to take them home. Four other elders were to accompany them, including George B. Chambers, Willard Richards, John R. Sayer, and L. J. Shurtliff. Due to the delay of Elder Dahle, Sonne cancelled their reservations so they could travel home together the next day. They, therefore, missed the cataclysmic ending to the Titanic and the consequent deaths of many of its passengers.[1]

Sonne served as president of the European Mission rom 1946 to 1950.

He and his first wife, Geneva Ballantyne, were the parents of five children. After her death in 1941, he married Leona Ballantyne Wooley and was step-father to her two children. He died on November 27, 1977.