R. Gary Shapiro
September 2007

I'm a Utah man.  I was born and raised in Utah, I attended the University of Utah, and I raised my family in Utah.  I  can remember when George Albert Smith was Church President and I remember, two months after he died, being in the Salt Lake Temple with my father (whose parents were both born in Romania) and my mother (whose progenitors are Utah pioneers) when we became a "forever family."  After completing a full-time mission, I was married in the same temple to my wife Deborah.

Debbie and I are the parents of nine children, eight of whom are married.  Our youngest is currently serving a full-time mission.  We have 28 grandchildren and four more are expected soon.  You can see our family tree at ShapiroUSA.net.

I've kept busy with family, work, and Church assignments.  But I've also enjoyed doing some fun projects in my spare time.  For example, in the 1970's, I compiled and co-published an eleven hundred page scripture reference book, An Exhaustive Concordance of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price.  This volume has been cited by several authors including Hugh Nibley in Brother Brigham Challenges the Saints and Daniel H. Ludlow in Nurturing Faith Through The Book of Mormon.

In 1989, I wrote a feature article about pornography, modesty, and morality for the Ensign magazine ("Leave the Obscene Unseen," Aug. 1989, p. 26). This article has also been cited by other authors including Victor B. Cline in his Encyclopedia of Mormonism article on pornography and Terrance D. Olson in "Truths of Moral Purity," Ensign, Oct. 1998.

In 2004, I began publishing on the web (my site is here) and the following year I began blogging (my blogs are here and here).  I use two portals to the LDS blogging community, LDSBlogs.org and LDSelect.org.  Most of my blogging friends are a lot younger and a lot better educated than I am and some of them aren't even all that friendly, but I enjoy the lively discussions.  The community calls itself the Bloggernacle.  I call it Broad Spectrum Mormonism.

I've been using computers since 1973 and programming computers since 1978.  Today, I manage research and development for a company that produces financial software used in credit unions.

Here are two pictures of my family:

Above are our children on Feb. 13, 2006. Below is our whole family on Dec. 27, 2005 (one son and his wife weren't there).