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NORTHBOROUGH, Mass. — Kenneth Hutchins, former chief of the Northborough Police Department, will lead the Republican National Convention in a Mormon prayer Thursday, the last day of the convention.
"This is an honor," Hutchins said in an interview with the Deseret News, a Salt Lake City-based newspaper owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Hutchins, who is battling cancer and recently completed a round of chemotherapy, said this invitation has cheered him up significantly.
His invocation is scheduled for just after the convention is called to order Thursday at 7 p.m. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is scheduled to accept his party's nomination later that evening.
The 71-year-old Hutchins served as Northborough's Chief of Police for 23 years before retiring in 2003 to spend three years as mission president of the LDS church in Tampa, Fla. As he explained to the Desert News, Hutchins has known Romney since the 1980s, when Romney was an LDS stake president in Boston. In 1987, Romney chose Hutchins to serve as a bishop in the church. Hutchins became stake president when Romney ran for the U.S. Senate in 1994. Romney, then governor of Massachusetts, spoke at Hutchins' retirement ceremony in 2003.
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