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In this interview, Lyle Hillyard relates how he became involved in politics at an early age and made the decision to run for elective office. He explains how, as a Latter-day Saint, he approached his role as a legislator. This interview was conducted on February 10, 2021, by Kellen Everett, a BYU student majoring in political science.

Kellen Everett: For just a little context, Senator Hillyard, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background? For example, where you grew up, where you went to school, and that sort of thing.

Lyle Hillyard: Thank you. Well, I was born and raised in Cache Valley, little town of Smithfield. Grew up on a small farm where I worked with my father and those things. But I went to school in the Cache County School District—Smithfield for elementary school, and North Cache High School, which is now Skyview High School. But I tell my kids North Cache was translated into heaven, so that’s why it’s not there anymore.

I graduated from North Cache in 1958 and went to Utah State University for two years. At those times you had to be twenty to go on an LDS mission, so I went for two years to Utah State. My major was basically physics. I came home from my mission—I went to Holland, served two and a half years in Holland. I came home in March and had a tough decision to make and decided to go to law school. So I did one more year at Utah State. And I was getting married—my wife was teaching school in Salt Lake. She graduated from Utah State. And we were trying to work out that she’d come back and teach in Logan for one year so I could finish my degree at Utah State. I took the LSAT and applied and University of Utah let me in. I understand they don’t do that anymore, but I got in without a bachelor’s degree—just three years of Utah State. I transferred my first year at University of Utah back to Utah State to get my degree.

So I graduated Utah State in ’65 and law school in ’67, and I took a pretty heavy load getting through law school. And on graduating from law school, I and a fellow graduate from Logan came back to Logan and set up our own law practice—Hillyard & Gunnell. That was over fifty years ago, and that firm now is Hillyard, Anderson, & Olson. That’s where I’ve worked for over fifty years as a lawyer in a law firm doing primarily trial work. I do mainly divorce, personal injury, criminal offense—mainly trial work.

Kellen Everett: So when did you first become interested in politics?

Lyle Hillyard: I remember in high school being somewhat interested in the national scene. The Hillyard family are all well-known Democrats, but my dad was never very active in politics. My mother was probably more interested in politics, but not that she was ever actively involved. She liked to read a lot, and she got me interested in that way. So when I was old enough to go to mass meetings, I picked the Republican Party and became active with them and been active my whole life with the Republican Party.

Kellen Everett: What government or political positions have you served in and when did you serve?

Lyle Hillyard: Well, I had a lot. When I graduated from law school, I decided I did not want to get immediately into politics. I wanted to do other things first. I graduated law school in ’67; I ran and won my first seat for the legislature in 1980. So for those thirteen years I was president of the Cache Valley Chamber of Commerce. I served on the alumni council of Utah State University and as such was in that leadership. I was on a library council, being committed to library work. A lot of legal things. I was involved in different legal organizations as well.

I ran once. It’s interesting, I hadn’t been out of law school very long when the Cache County Republican chairman came and asked me to run for county attorney. I won’t get into all the details. I reluctantly decided to run. Didn’t run very hard and I lost. It was no big deal because I wasn’t that interested. But my first real elected position politically was the Cache County Republican chairman, and I did that for six years. I quit in 1976. I had served three terms. I thought that was long enough. And then our family was blessed with a child with disabilities, and that really kind of changed my life until 1980. At that time political opportunities came up, and my son was doing much better, and so the decision was made—let’s go for it. And I did OK.

Kellen Everett: So your first political office was the Republican Party chair. Why? What motivated you to run for that particular office?

Lyle Hillyard: Well, you know, when we were in law school, I really got quite involved in the Republican Party. I went to the legislature several times. Our neighbor was a member of the Utah House—Republican—and he was in our stake presidency, and he got me interested. We went up there, and so just always had kind of an interest in it. And we organized the Young Republicans of Cache County. And we put on a Lincoln state dinner, where we had Rogers C. B. Morton—you probably don’t know that name. He was a national president or chairman of the Republican Party. He came to Logan, and he spoke to the Lincoln Day dinner. We had thirteen hundred people at that dinner up here at Logan, and that kind of got me going. And we were doing that, and then the chairman of the party stepped down because he was going to run for the county commission. When he did that, several of the Republicans in the area came to me and said, “You know, you’re young, but you’ve done a lot of work. How’d you like to run?” I ran and that’s how I was elected and ran—elected twice more.

Kellen Everett: And then you took a hiatus from politics.

Lyle Hillyard: I did. Basically, for four years I was not really involved in politics in that way.

Kellen Everett: OK, so what motivated you to return?

Lyle Hillyard: An interesting story—my father passed away in 1980. And my brother came down from Idaho Falls, and he and I went to the local bank to close the bank account of my father’s. And as we were there, Chick Bowen, who was a state senator, was there, and Chick pulled me aside and said, “Lyle, I’m not going to be running for the senate this year, and I think you’d be a good person to run for my senate seat.” And that really got me thinking about it, and so I got people all lined up to do the campaigning. And Chick called me the night before the campaign could open to file and said he changed his mind to say he’s going to run. I said, “Well, I’m not going to run against you.” So I backed off. But the people I had geared up to go said, “You know, our member of the House is getting older, and he’s having some challenges—health challenges. Why don’t you run for the House?” So then I turned around and ran for the House. I beat him in the primary and then served two terms in the House, and then the next year or four years later, Chick Bowen had already in fact resigned and retired and at that point, I ran for the senate seat. So I served four years in the House and thirty-six years in the senate.

Kellen Everett: And did church teachings influence your decision to become involved in politics?

Lyle Hillyard: Absolutely. Church has always been an important part of my life and people say, “Oh, I’ve always felt the church is true.” I’ve always been involved in it. I found a great satisfaction as a missionary, as a young man growing up with the Scout program, the other programs we did. So I’ll share this story. When I was in the senate, I was serving on a thing called the Constitutional Revision Commission. And that was a commission set up primarily to look at the Utah Constitution and see how we should amend it. Interestingly, a member of that commission was a man named Kevin Worthen, and I got acquainted with him. That’s way before he became dean of the law school and president of BYU. He was on that commission. There was also a man named James E. Faust. And Elder Faust was at that time an assistant to the Twelve, and then the church made a policy change and general authorities were not allowed to serve on boards or commissions.

So Elder Faust was then leaving that commission, and I developed a good relationship with him. I appreciated his intellect and discussions we had. Now, I mentioned something to him. I said, “What are we going to do without having the church influence?” He looked at me and smiled, and he said, “Lyle, you know the church as well as I do; if you can’t represent your personal feelings which you think that’d be the church’s feelings, I’d be surprised.” So it’s true. It really brought that home to me—so when people say that church is just part of who I am and what I believe and what I think’s important in life.

Kellen Everett: So how did your religion affect your approach to public office as a representative and as a senator?

Lyle Hillyard: Well, let me share with you what I say when people ask me why I believe in what I do. One thing I’ve learned—I believe this personally, and I’ve seen it my practice of law—is the old adage: if you teach a person how to fish, you’ve solved the problem; if you give them a fish, you haven’t. And so as I’ve taken that approach, I’ve not been afraid to say no to things that are just handouts, because I don’t think they solve on a long-term basis what we really want to solve. I realized they’re important on some short-term basis, and we ought to do them.

But, for example, one thing I’ve learned in law practice is I’ve seen a lot of worst cases where you have a woman who’s just graduated from high school, she gets married, she’s been married for twenty years, she has five or six or seven children. She’s never worked outside the home office, you know, awfully busy at home, obviously, and now suddenly her husband leaves her. And she’s sitting there, and he wants to marry somebody else. She’s now in really a dire strait, and, boy, I really have a lot of empathy for people in that case—to get them education, get them some help so they can get through that crisis and move on with their lives. And so, I think, as I look at the legislative things—the things we can do, obviously, public safety is a key thing we have to do, public education to make it available to people. I support charter schools and private schools as well.

I love to say when people say, “Well, Christ taught us to be kind to the poor and help the poor,” and I say, “Yeah, I believe that, but he didn’t tell the government to do it, he told us to do it.” And so our obligation as individual citizens is to make sure we’re charitable. We minister, if I could use a current term, that we help people and not rely on the government or the government to force us to do it. And I think that’s really my approach in government, and I think that ties back to what I’ve learned in the church.

Kellen Everett: Earlier you mentioned that your family, the Hillyards, are Democrats, but you are affiliated with the Republican Party. Did your religious beliefs affect your choice of party?

Lyle Hillyard: I don’t think so, as such, other than the fact that I think my political and religious philosophy is much the same—that we need to help people help themselves, not just the handout. People ask me the difference between Republicans and Democrats, because I’ve got some good friends that are Democrats that are as Christian as you could be. But I really think the difference is when we look for a solution to a problem, the question is where do we find it? Does the government solve it, or do we help people solve their own problems?

Kellen Everett: And do you believe that Latter-day Saints can belong to different political parties and still be faithful members of the church?

Lyle Hillyard: Yes, and I think that’s important because there’s no party, I think, that gives exactly, exactly what you want. I mean, I have to do some compromising when I see some of the votes going through the legislature. If I said, “I’m only going to vote for this bill only if it’s exactly what I want,” I’d vote no on everything. But you need to have to look back and say there’s other people. One of the things I really liked is the fact that every morning in the Senate, we have an opening prayer. And that prayer is given by many different people from a number of many different religions. We’ve had Hindu, we’ve had Native Americans, we’ve had obviously Jewish, Methodist, Mormon, whatever you may have up there. And I always said I love that because it reminds me that I represent a diverse group of people. I may not belong to the Catholic Church, but people in the Catholic Church who live in my district have to rely on me to represent them. So I think that’s an important characteristic of having people in different faiths. And I think I can do things within the Republican Party; people can do things within the Democratic Party. If everything is not as they want, they can make the changes they need, that they think will make a better place.

Kellen Everett: What lessons have you learned about politics that you’d like to share with young Latter-day Saints considering involvement in politics or a career in government?

Lyle Hillyard: Let me tell you one thing that I really have liked is the fact that not one group has the answers to all of the problems. And I think one of the great things about being in an elected position is the ability to listen and understand what the other person’s perspective is and see how that fits with yours or others’ and see where you may need to change or they may need to change in a discussion area. So I think if you’re going to get involved in politics, your agenda should not be to get one thing done. But your agenda should be to have the whole process work and understand the whole process better together. It can be very rewarding. I know I’ve walked out of meetings and said to myself, “Boy, I’m glad I was there today, I really made a difference in people’s lives.” And I think the government can do that. I think what an example we set for people in the government can be very, very important. So I think, you know, it’s important that we all get involved, give our share, and not be afraid to either learn or to express our views in a civil way.

Kellen Everett: OK. Is there anything else that you would like to add or talk about that we haven’t already discussed?

Lyle Hillyard: I’ll just say this: I think it’s important for people getting involved in politics to not be afraid to work hard. And to go find somebody who may need some help. So you may do like I did when I was in law school and knew a member of the legislature, got acquainted with him at the legislature, and watched him work. And I think getting involved at a grassroots level and being willing to work and finding somebody to work for. You may work for them and say, “Hey, I don’t like this person, I’m glad I found out about him ’cause I don’t want to do anything more. I need change.”

I had an intern every year. And I always sit down near the end of the session and say, “What have you learned here really different? And do you have any questions about my political philosophy?” And it’s been really an interesting discussion. I say I don’t care if you’re Republican or Democrat when you come to work with me, I just want you to work hard and be loyal to me. And give me your feedback. So if you think I’m wrong on something, tell me—don’t be afraid of it. I’m not going to bite your head off. And I may tell you you’re wrong, but I’ll listen to you and talk to you. And I think that’s really important that they need to get involved on a local level and see how things work and not be afraid.