President J. Wilford Booth's no-tobacco campaign in Armenia
Published October 25, 2026 at 12:50 PM
Contributed by
Millennial Star Research
While attending an Armenian Refugee School program in Syria, President J. Wilford Booth proposed a plan to the chairman of the board, Mr. Louis Hekimian, to raise funds for the school if attendees would pledge to quit smoking and donate their tobacco money. The plan was accepted, and many people, including the board members and twenty male teachers, immediately pledged to quit, resulting in a successful no-tobacco movement.
In Their Own Words
“The chairman, Mr. Louis Hekimian, one of the most capable and influential Armenians in all Syria, threw his package of cigarettes away before the audience and shouted. 'I have quit!' All the male teachers of the school—about twenty of them—sent in their proclamation of acceptance. The conceit lasted over three hours after that—until after one o'clock, but during all that time, there was only one man in all that big audience who lit another cigarette. — Millennial Star 86:19”
Sources & References
The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star (Manchester, later Liverpool, England, May 1840–1970), Vol. 86, No. 19 (1924). https://archive.org/details/millennialstar8619eng (account extracted verbatim from the issue's Internet Archive OCR text; research confidence: high)
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