Dan in Real Life
Meet Dan
Born the 10th of my parents’ eleven children, I was raised in a lively and welcoming East Millcreek home full of faith, music, dogs, firearms and fine art, with extra beds and a place at the table for those who on occasion needed a place to stay.
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(In plaid jacket, next to Dad)
I attended William Penn Elementary and Evergreen Jr. High schools and worked at the family furniture business in Sugarhouse where I earned enough money to buy my dream car, a ‘72 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40, in which I crisscrossed the backroads of Utah from the Wasatch Mountains to the Canyonlands, and from the West Desert to the Uintas.
After graduating from Olympus High School, I spent a year learning to fly a private plane around Chesapeake Bay and exploring the East Coast, from the Gulf of Mexico to Northeastern Canada.
I sold the Land Cruiser to help fund a two-year mission to Spain after which I enrolled at the University of Utah. With an interest in law and politics I took a job at a Salt Lake City law firm and, through the Hinckley Institute of Politics, I was offered an internship for a semester with the Utah Governor’s office in Washington D.C. during the final year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. I rubbed shoulders there with the likes of Orrin Hatch, Jake Garn and then-former Governor Scott Matheson. I enjoyed it all but in the end I determined not to make law and politics my career.
After convincing the one and only Jana Bishop of SLC’s Parleys neighborhood to marry me, we moved into her grandfather’s old home in Canyon Rim.
She came and helped me each night, after her own day at work, while I began a career as an independent insurance agent and eventual owner of Granite Insurance Agency in Murray.
(The view as I exit my office in Murray each evening)
(Christmas road trip camping in Nayarit, Mexico)
We eventually built a new home next door and, six kids later, we built another home and settled permanently in East Millcreek. We now have three grandkids, each being raised in the SD-14 cities of Millcreek, Murray and Holladay.
(With the grandkids)
We all love hiking, skiing, biking or fishing in our cherished Wasatch Mountains which grace this blessed community.
From Sugarhouse to Holladay and from East Millcreek to Murray, the neighborhoods that comprise Senate District 14 are, and for many generations have been, my home. My grandparents are buried here,
and my grandchildren are being raised here.
If knowing a community is essential to representing it I suppose I am well-suited to represent this one. Like the East Millcreek home in which I was raised, I will strive to keep our community and our state a welcome refuge for both resident and refugee, a sanctuary for nature and outdoor adventure, a bastion for the arts, education, entrepreneurship and most of all, for freedom.
