D. James Cannon was a member of the Utah House of Representatives

Utah House of Representatives

The Utah House of Representatives is the lower house of the Utah State Legislature, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Utah. The House is composed of 75 representatives elected from single member constituent districts. Each district contains an average population of 35,000 people...

 from 1957 to 1959. He was also the Republican

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

 candidate for Governor of Utah in 1964 and ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Salt Lake City in 1967. He also coined the Utah slogan "the greatest snow on earth."

Cannon was the son of Sylvester Q. Cannon

Sylvester Q. Cannon

Sylvester Quayle Cannon was the sixth presiding bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints between 1925 and 1938 and a member of church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from October 6, 1939 until his death. He was the son of George Q...

 and the husband of Elaine A. Cannon

Elaine A. Cannon

Elaine Anderson Cannon was the eighth general president of the Young Women organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1978 to 1984. Cannon has been a writer and an editor and is the author of over 50 books.-Biography:...

. James Cannon served as a Mormon missionary

Mormon missionary

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is one of the most active modern practitioners of missionary work, with over 52,000 full-time missionaries worldwide, as of the end of 2010...

 in Hawaii.

Cannon's Mormon Essays were published by Deseret Book

Deseret Book

Deseret Book is the largest Latter-day Saint book publisher and also owns a chain of LDS bookstores in the western United States. Over 150 people work in its Salt Lake City headquarters...

 in 1970. He also wrote a history of Sugar House, Utah.

Cannon also served as the executive director of the Utah Travel Council. It was in this position that he coined Utah's slogan.

Cannon was an alumnus of the University of Utah

University of Utah

The University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...

.

Sources

• Lambert, Maurice Reed. Scott R. Lambert, ed. All is Well, Mission to the Hawaiian Islands: 1941-44. p. 101
• political graveyard bio on Cannon
• Deseret News obituary