[citation needed] Andersen spent his earliest years on a dry farm in Blue Creek, Utah.

He was baptized by his father on May 6, 1923, and the next year his family moved to Virden, New Mexico to be closer to his Andersen and Richardson grandparents in the Gila Valley.

After living in Mexico, Andrew and Janet settled in Virden, where Andersen's parents, Hans and Mynoa, moved the family in 1923-24.

He enrolled at BYU in the fall of 1938 and graduated in June 1940 with a bachelor's degree in accounting, one month after his father died from cancer.

After working for the Harmon Audit Company in Phoenix and Prescott from 1940 to 1942, he moved back to Mesa in the summer of 1942, where he took a job with a local CPA firm.

Starting January 1, 1946, he worked for Wayne Mayhew and Co. in San Francisco until he was recruited to teach law and accounting at BYU in the fall of 1946.

Except for a brief stint in Phoenix from 1962 to 1965, Andersen was a professor of accounting at BYU until 1981 during the administrations of Ernest L. Wilkinson and Dallin H. Oaks.

They desired to have their children's academic learning enhanced and enlightened by principles of morality, religion, liberty and patriotism.

The founders purchased an LDS Church meetinghouse in Pleasant Grove, Utah, and opened the American Heritage School (AHS) in 1970 with 80 students enrolled.

After retiring from BYU, Andersen and his wife were called as church service missionaries: first in Buenos Aires, Argentina and then in Lima, Peru.

On January 1, 1991, he began serving as first counselor to Hugh W. Pinnock in the Sunday School General Presidency.

As he explained in his first book: As originally interpreted, the United States Constitution denied government the right to regulate and control the citizen in the use of his property.

In his exuberance, however, he failed to follow his father's instruction and add fuel to the car's tank before returning home.

As the funeral message continued, Elder Andersen's son declared, "I saw my father put on his coat, bid us good-bye, and walk the long distance to the chapel, that he might attend an early meeting."