Richard Eyre (author)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (May 2008)

Richard M. Eyre is a consultant, speaker, and author of many books. He was also a candidate for the Republican nomination for Utah governor in 1992.

Eyre and his wife Linda have written over a dozen books, many bestsellers. These include Teaching Your Children Values which was the first parenting book to make it to the position of #1 New York Times bestseller since Dr. Spock's book.^{[citation needed]} Eyre's Spiritual Serendipity: Cultivating and Celebrating the Art of the Unexpected was published by Simon and Schuster in 1997.^[1] Other books by Eyre include The Discovery of Joy (1974), Teaching Children Joy (1986), The Birth We Call Death with Paul H. Dunn, Life Before Life (2000) and How to Talk to Your Children About Sex with his wife, Linda J. Eyre. Besides writting these non-fiction works Eyre also wrote a novel entitled The Awakening.^[2] The Eyre's recent book Empty Nesting Parenting: Adjusting Your Stewardship as Your Children Leave Home has been widely recommended as reading for parents of college students.^[3]^[4]^[5]

Richard is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As a young man, Eyre served as a missionary in New York City.^[6] He served as a mission president for the church in the England London South Mission. Baptisms spiked in the mission after the results of an opinion poll on parenthood conducted by Eyre were published in such publications as the London Evening Standard.^[7]

Eyre wrote the Encyclopedia of Mormonism article on Joy.^[8] He also wrote the section on the views of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in How Different Religions View Death and Afterlife: Second Edition Edited by Christopher Jay Johnson and Marsha McGee.^[9]

During the Reagan administration, Eyre served as the director of the White House Conference on Parents and Children.^[10] Eyre holds degrees from Utah State University and Brigham Young University. He also received an MBA from Harvard in 1971.^[11]

Eyre has also been a long-time advocate of schools of choice and voucher programs. He was a candidate for the governorship of Utah with this as one of his major campaign planks in 1992. Eyre won the support of the Republican State convention but lost to Mike Leavitt in the latter Republican primary.^[12] Eyre has since been a major supporter of vouchers, and was one of the key speakers for the voucher proposition on Utah's 2007 ballot.^[13]

Richard and his wife have hosted the program Families Are Forever on the VISN Network.^[14] They have 9 children, and have lived in both Washington, DC and Salt Lake City.

The Eyres also serve as board members of CHOICE humanitarian and have been involved in projects to bring wells to villages in such countries as Bolivia.^[15]