The Winter – Spring 1972 semester was the second in the Holy Land and was led by LaMar Berrett and Keith Meservy. They took 26 young women and 12 young men to the Holy land. The first study program was four years before this 1972 semester. Hostilities persisted in the Holy Land following the 1967 War with regular attacks on the borders of Israel. Ellis Rassmussen was supposed to take another group in the fall of 1968; however, it had to be postponed because of a lack of student enrollment. President Wilkinson and BYU’s Board of Trustees put the Jerusalem Study program on hold from 1969 – 1971. During 1970 and 1971, LaMar Berrett had gone to the Middle East with Robert Taylor and other LDS travelers in 1970 and 1971 on the Lands of the Scriptures Workshop. These experiences set a course that would be repeated in the 1072 student program.
Bob Taylor, Barrett, and Meservy worked together the arrange the extensive travel itinerary for the 38 registered students, an itinerary that included: Paris, Rome, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and Jordan. LaMar and Keith traveled with their families and the students for 25 days before arriving in Israel. No one really noticed that they had left on the program on Saturday, January 29, 1972, but it was a very big deal when they entered into Israel on Tuesday, February 22. According to S. Kent Brown’s book A Light On a Hill about the Jerusalem Center and Robert Taylor:
“After the Six Day War in June 1967, the Israelis and Jordanians arranged a border crossing system that would allow Palestinians to pass back and forth over the Allenby Bridge, either for business or because their families now lived on both sides of the new border owing to human displacements brought about by the war. In time, vegetables and fruits grown on the West Bank were also allowed passage on trucks driven by Palestinians from the Israeli side to the Jordanian side to be taken to market. But no one had devised a means for non-Palestinians to cross the border –until David Galbraith, at Bob’s behest, requested permission from Israeli authorities to do so well in advance of February 1972. David took the request for a possible crossing to the head of the Ministry of Tourism, a man named Zvi Dagan who in turn, informed the media networks days before the student group came to the bridge. The networks were ready. Alerted to the international interest, LaMar called the Travel Study office from Amman, Jordan, and asked that parents of students be alerted to watch their televisions.
“On Tuesday morning, February 22, the BYU student group arrived at the Jordanian terminal for the formal processing of passports. After a long wait, bu bus the group approached the Allenby Bridge which linked the two border crossing terminals. But something was amiss. So the buss turned back to the Jordanian terminal for another check of the passport manifest and for visual confirmation of the photographs in the students’ passports with the students themselves. With those details finally taken care of, the bus behan its second journey westward to the bridge. No one on the bus was allowed to take photographs because they were entering a sensitive military zone.
“The Jordanian bus came to a halt at the middle of the bridge. At that point, students, faculty members, and children had to climb off the bus, grab their luggage, say good-bye to the bus driver, and drag their luggage across the bridge toward the Israeli terminal. To say the least, the bridge itself was disappointing–it was small, and the Jordan River below it was narrow, slow moving, and dirty. On the other side of the border, the Israeli terminal, like the Jordanian, was cramped. But the weather was pleasantly warm; the travelers were 800 feet below sea level where winter temperatures are mild.
It was when they emerged from the terminal building, as a group that the students and faculty experienced the highlight of their trip to this point. Facing them were television cameras from Israeli television and reporters from UPI and NBC. Because they were the first Americans to cross the border between Jordan and Israel since the Six Day War in 1967, a span of almost four and a half years, they were newsworthy. Naturally, there were interviews all around. Within hours, images of the BYU student group, and the interviews with them and their leaders, played all over the world. The images included a huge welcoming banner and Israeli “Shalom” hats perched on their heads courtesy of the Ministry of Tourism. BYU administrators, including Bob, could not have been more pleased at the event. The spotlight brought a welcome, positive attention the the University; and it would only create more interest among prospective faculty and students.”
David Galbraith had arranged a bus pickup. After three weeks on the road, the students called it “a beautiful bus.” (The next trips for student field trips would be on a so- called truck-bus, a large truck that had been converted into a bus.) After a visit to Jericho and the ruins of the ancient town, the first place conquered by Joshua and the Israelites after crossing the Jordan river, the bus rolled upward toward Jerusalem. When the bus reached the first crest of the climb, David had the driver stop and the students climbed off the bus. From that place, they could all see the two towers that stood atop the Mount of Olives, the one tower at the Russian Church of the Ascension and the other at the Augusta Victoria Hospital (in 1974, a third visible tower would be built at the Hebrew University). For the students, it was a special moment. They had arrived.
In advance of their arrival, David had bent all his efforts to locate a suitable place as an academic home for the semester. In the end, he found the City Hotel that sat on a hill overlooking East Jerusalem and the Old City from the north. (It sits on the same street as the Mormon House which, beginning in 1978, would house LDS Church services until the completion of the BYU Jerusalem Center.) The City Hotel was certainly not as convenient to places of interest in the city as the Ritz Hotel was for the student group in 1968. But a nearby bus line took students to most places they wanted to visit. By 1972, the Ritz Hotel was doing a brisk business and it had no room for students who would stay at a discount rate. Besides, in the earlier days the Ritz Hotel had given up its bar for a classroom and study hall. But with a thriving tourist business, such an accommodation was just not possible. So the City Hotel became the faculty and students’ residence. Even on a good day, the hot water for showers did not reach the top floor. Naturally, that floor was for the men. The bar was emptied of its contents and turned into a small library. A small room on the main floor became the study and lecture hall. It was home.
LaMar and Keith adopted the curriculum that Dan Ludlow had developed four years earlier, along with its field trip schedule, made adjustments, and opened classes. Because of the presence of LDS people who were not in the country in 1968, LaMar and Keith enriched the academic offerings for students. They invited David to give lectures on the Arab-Israeli conflict; John Tvedtnes, a graduate student at the Hebrew University, taught a class on ancient history; and Yohanan Aharoni, a noted Israeli archaeologist, offered a class on the archaeology of the Holy Land. With these classes, coupled with special lectures on Arab and Israeli concerns, the curriculum began to take the shape that it would exhibit for years to come. And the students loved it. For, in harmony with Bob’s vision years before, they were immersed in the fascinating, real-life drama that was playing out in the city and were able to visit the places where biblical events occurred as they studied them in the scriptures. Student life was good.
One of the bonuses for the faculty and students was the arrival of President and Sister Tanner along with Elder Franklin D. Richards and his wife, Helen, in April.
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Special thanks to Diane Dinsmoor Morgan for submitting information for the 1972 BYU Jerusalem Study Abroad.