New gable installed on Harold B. Lee’s birthday

Clifton native and former president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Harold B. Lee, has been gone for 39 years, but he still received a birthday present on March 28: the gable and star missing from his alma mater for half a century were restored to the building.

“I’m betting Harold B. Lee will have a smile on his face,” said his grandson, David Goates. Lee would have been 113 years old.

This picture, taken in 1917, shows how the building appeared when Harold B. Lee and Ezra Taft Benson attended class there. Notice the star and the battlements.

The academy’s gable looked like this from the time the original stones fell out in the 1960s until the new gable was placed on March 28, 2012.

The new gable beautifully completes the front of the Oneida Stake Academy building. Once all rock work is completed on the building, it will be washed. This process will removed the pink cast which has leached from the red mortar onto the stones below the new gable and the rest of the building. Originally, the building’s stones were cemented with a white mortar. the new gable was constructed from rock hewn from the academy’s original quarry at the mouth of Cub River, northeast of Franklin, Idaho.