WASHINGTON, D.C. — Current and former elected officials and religious, business and community leaders filled Emancipation Hall in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center on Wednesday, Dec. 11, to celebrate the installation of a statue of Martha Hughes Cannon to represent the state of Utah.
“I hope that as people come to Emancipation Hall, they will feel inspired by Martha Hughes Cannon’s example of service, of loving and lifting those around them, and that they’ll set their sights high,” said President Camille N. Johnson, Relief Society general president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Of the frontier physician, public-health reformer, suffragist, state senator, orator, wife and mother, President Johnson added, “The things she was doing in her time probably seemed impossible, or nearly impossible, to achieve.”
The only woman in her medical school class, Martha Hughes Cannon became the nation’s first female state senator. “She was determined. She was tenacious, and I hope that women—my daughters, my granddaughters, my great granddaughters—will look at Martha Hughes Cannon and be inspired by her example. We’ve been asked by our Prophet [President Russell M. Nelson] to stand up and speak out, and she is a beautiful example of that.”
In 2018, the Utah Legislature voted to replace a statue of television pioneer Philo T. Farnsworth with that of a statue of Martha Hughes Cannon.
Once on display outside the historic Supreme Court chambers in Utah’s Capitol, the statue was created by Utah artist Ben Hammond. The Capitol—where 100 statues represent two prominent individuals from each state—also features a statue of Brigham Young.
President Johnson offered the opening prayer at the congressional statue dedication ceremony for the Martha Hughes Cannon statue in Washington, D.C.
Elder Gary E. Stevenson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and Elder Matthew S. Holland, a General Authority Seventy, also attended the statue installation in the Capitol Visitor Cente —where some 3 million people visit each year.
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