With it having been over 80 years since the first stake was formed in Chicago, and over 65 since the first stake was formed in Detroit, one would think we would be past the era of the Utah Expatriate. However I don't feel it.
While not all the people I hometeach have connections to Utah, they all connect to Utah, Idaho or Washington State. Some people at times think of The Belle Isle Branch as white Utah Expatriates and black Michigan born converts, but it is more complex than that.
A classic example of the Utah expatriate is Sister Jean B. Bingham. True, she has been resident in Utah for the last 9 years, and was born in Provo. She also started her undergraduate education at BYU and met her husband there. However she went to high school in New Jersey, and elementary school in Minnesota and Texas. She spent most of her married life in Illinois and Wisconsin.
However she was raised a Utah expatriate. Her parents were from Tooelle and Grantsville and every summer her family would spend 4 weeks visiting relatives and family in Utah. It is that constant return to Utah that makes someone a Utah exapatriate, and the key in me not being one.
My first trip to Utah was when I was one. I have no recollection of it. The next time I went to Utah was a age 15. I had by that time made three trips to California, so I was closer to a California expatriate with three of my grandparents living there, and my parents having come close to moving back there in the late 1980s.
Of course when Sister Bingham was growing up from 1952 even until the time she was married in 1972, the closest temples were in Utah. When I was growing up the closest temples were in DC until I was 4, Chicago until I was 9, Toronto until I was 19, and I was thus endowed in the Detroit Temple.
Thus it is the building of the DC Temple in 1974, not the first stake in the east, that allows us to start moving beyond being Utah Expatriates.
