Wayne M. Hancock
Wayne M. Hancock was sustained as a General Authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and served as a General Authority Seventy in the Second Quorum of the Seventy from April 1997 to October 2001. He also served in the Church as a stake president, bishop, high councilor, mission president’s counselor, and president of the Utah Provo Mission. He served as president of the Bern Switzerland Temple from 2005 to 2008.
He was born in Safford, Arizona, on July 16, 1931, and raised in Glendale, California. "In 1950, Elder Hancock submitted his mission papers and was given a mission farewell before finding out the draft board had rejected his request for a draft deferment because of the Korean War. Sorely disappointed, he felt prompted to transfer from the University of Arizona — “the family university” — to Brigham Young University. There he met Connie Ann Cameron, who would become his wife."[1]
He earned his bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University and a juris doctorate from the University of Arizona. After his graduation, he entered the U.S. Air Force's Judge Advocate General Corps and was stationed in Munich, Germany, for three years. Upon finishing his Air Force tour of duty in 1960 at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, he practiced law for six years in Phoenix, Arizona. He then worked in Midland, Michigan, for twenty-seven years with the Dow Chemical Company and lived for a several years in Switzerland and Italy as vice president and general counsel of Dow Chemical Europe. He retired as vice president and general counsel.
Hancock and his wife, Connie, are the parents of eight children. He died on May 27, 2023, in Salt Lake City at the age of 91.
