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(I can't remember who shared this with an email list I was on. But I want to share, so the story won't be lost. Conny Hillgaard) |
This is the information on the CTR ring that I have in my files. It is from a Deseret News article.
Putting T in CTR was right choice
By Jerry Johnston
Desseret News staff writer
The first thing you notice about Norma Nichols is she doesn't wear a CTR ring. And that's a little like Coco Chanel not wearing perfume.
In 1970, Nichols chaired the committee that invented the ring. They needed some kind of "badge of belief" for both boys and girls. "Back then boys didn't wear necklaces and earrings," Nichols says slyly, "so a ring seemed like a good idea." It turned out to be a legendary idea.
Today, at age 90, Norma Nichols has vivid
memories of her time on the LDS Primary General Board. She served from
1956 to 1970 - an era that, in hindsight, was the "Golden Age" of Primary.
Nichols was in the room when Naomi Randall
was assigned to come up with words for a children's song to be sung at
General Conference (she came up with "I Am a Child of God").
Nichols was there to brainstorm new names
for classes (Merry hands, Firelights), to redesign the bandelo and to serve
popcorn to Australian kids who'd sung "Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree"
but had never tasted popcorn. It was a heady time. Clara McMaster and Mildred
Pettit were writing some of the most memorable melodies in Mormon history,
penny drives fueled the Primary Children's Hospital and kids waited for
the mailman just to get the latest "Children's Friend."
"They were great years," Nichols says.
"I was writing assignments all the time."
Amid that grand flurry of creative ideas,
however, no one imagined a little ring with the letters CTR would become
the emblem of LDS youth. "I remember we thought about dropping the word
'the' out and having just a CR ring - Choose Right," Nichols says today.
"I went home that night to think about it. That's when the inspiration
came that the word 'the' was the most important word of all. Choosing right
could mean many things, but choosing the right meant there was only one
way. We kept the 'T' in CTR." Surprisingly, the phrase Choose the Right
appears nowhere in scripture. The Bible says "choose the day" and "choose
the way." It says "choose life" and even "choose death," but "choosing
the right" never comes up. The expression does appear in an 1864 talk by
Brigham Young: "God rules and reigns and has made all his children as free
as himself to choose the right or the wrong," but it wouldn't be until
Joseph Townsend used the expression 14 times in his famous LDS hymn that
the words took root in the
culture.
Choose the Right would become the CTR
class in Primary. And the CTR class is what spawned the ring seen 'round
the world.
Coy Miles was contracted to come up with
a design for it. Joel Izatt did the artwork.
Nichols and her committee thought a shield
would be nice, to "shield" children from temptation. And a green background
was chosen to represent the evergreen tree - a tree that stays constant
from season to season. And the price had to be right. After some debate,
the committee settled on 35 cents.
Looking back at those years today from
her cozy Copperton home, Norma Nichols wouldn't change a thing.
Well, maybe just one thing.
"Because I was the chair of the committee,
people always focus on me when it comes to the CTR ring," she says. "I
wish the other members of the committee would get some recognition."
No sooner said than done. Thank you Virginia
Cannon, Vauna Jacobsen, Ruth Clinger, Virginia Bryner, Jean Hughes and
Helen Evans. And thank you Norma Nichols, for choosing the right and letting
us know about them.