| My wife, Christine, and I were both raised in Bountiful, but we moved to Salt Lake City when we married, because we wanted to live and raise our children in a more diverse place. We have lived in the Douglas neighborhood for 29 years. I was first appointed and then re-elected to Utah State House in 2010.
I attended the University of Utah, and graduated with an English major, History minor, and a teaching degree in 1982. I taught English, U.S. History, and Civics in secondary schools for twenty-six years, twenty-one of them at Bountiful High School, where I also taught A.P. U.S. Government and Comparative Government. As a teacher at Bountiful High School, I was an advisory to a Gay-Straight Alliance, the only GSA to ever meet at the school.
I was also active in the teacher's union, where I served as my local Association president, and then on the UEA Board of Directors. I left the classroom 2 years ago to serve full time as the Executive Director of the Davis Education Association, the union organization representing teachers in the Davis School District.
I have also been active in my community. I helped create the Douglas Neighborhood Association in Salt Lake City to give our neighborhood more influence with the city on many issues. We have been successful in our efforts to mitigate traffic and parking concerns, and are very active in land use, zoning, economic development and transportation issues in the city.
I served on the Salt Lake City Board of Education from 1998-2002, the last two years as the Board President. I ran for the school board in part because I believed that their decision to ban gay clubs in the schools was a mistake. The school board reversed their ban on gay clubs while I was on the board. I also helped facilitate the sale of the unused Douglas Elementary School to the Jewish Community Center, which now operates the school as the K-8 McGillis School, and which also preserved valuable green space on 1300 East.
In 2007 and 2008 I was the chair of the East Central Community Council, a community council located between downtown Salt Lake and the University. In this capacity, I took the lead in fighting Rocky Mountain Power's aggressive plan to install above-ground high voltage electrical transmission lines through the yards of our neighborhood. That continuing effort has fortified my commitment to burying electrical transmission lines.
My wife works at the Museum of Natural History at the University of Utah, where she teaches science classes for visiting elementary school children. My son lives in North Carolina with his wife, who is a Captain in the U.S. Army. My oldest daughter lives in Chicago where she works at the Field Museum. She is part of a research project that is building a database with implications for climate change research, and will start graduate school at Northwestern in the fall. My youngest daughter is a sophomore at Utah State. |