Michael Patrick O’Brien (editor) and Gary Topping
Michael Patrick O’Brien is an employment law and media law attorney practicing with the law firm of Parsons Behle & Latimer in Salt Lake City, Utah. He earned a degree in Government and Theology from the University of Notre Dame in 1983, and a law degree from the University of Utah College of Law in 1986. He grew up in Ogden and graduated from St. Joseph’s High School in 1979. He has served on the school boards of St. Vincent DePaul School, Utah Catholic Schools, and Judge Memorial Catholic High School, and also as president of the boards of the 4th Street Homeless Clinic and the Utah Ulster Project. He was close friends with the Trappist monks who lived in Huntsville, Utah from 1947 to 2017. His book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press in August 2021 and awarded the best non-fiction book of 2022 by the League of Utah Writers.
Gary Topping is a historian and archivist living in Cottonwood Heights, Utah. Although a native of the southern Oregon coast, he became a “naturalized” Utahn in 1977 when he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Utah and found employment as Curator of Manuscripts at the Utah State Historical Society. In 1991 he accepted a faculty appointment at Salt Lake Community College, where he also met his future wife, Marianna Hopkins. In 2001 while still teaching, he became part-time Archivist of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City. He is now retired from both positions. He is a Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society and Honorary Lifetime Member. He has written eleven books, including most recently D. Michael Quinn: Mormon Historian (2022).