R. Gary Shapiro
September 2011

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  remember when George Albert Smith was Church President. It was just two months after he died that I first felt the powerful, sweet spirit of the temple as I knelt with my father (a son of Romanian immigrants) and my mother (a daughter of Utah pioneers) when we became an eternal family.  After completing a full-time mission, I was married in that same temple to my wife Deborah.

Debbie and I are the parents of seven returned missionary sons and two beautiful daughters. They have all been married in the temple except the youngest who is a busy university student.  We currently have 37 grandchildren.  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 started blogging (my blogs are here and here).  I blog mainly at LDSBlogs.org.  Most of my blogging friends are younger and better educated than I am and some of them aren't even very friendly.  But I enjoy the lively discussions.  The group calls itself the Bloggernacle; I call it Broad Spectrum Mormonism.

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

Here are two pictures of my family:

Above: With my wife and our nine children. Below: The same group, but with spouses and grandchildren. (Both pictures taken on Nov. 26, 2009.)