Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum

Mr. Calderwood was born in 1937 in Tremonton, Utah, a small town located approximately 80 miles north of Salt Lake City. He graduated from high school with honors and attended the University of Utah. He interrupted his schooling at the University to serve a two and a half year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Uruguay and Paraguay in the late 1950's where he learned Spanish and Portuguese. His Church mission experience engendered great interest in Latin America and he refocused his University studies to enable him to be more involved with that area of the world. He graduated from the University of Utah in 1962 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in International Economics.

He was also commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the U. S. Army. He spent three of his five years of active duty in Panama, where he was assigned to a U. S. Army Special Forces unit. He was sent to Ecuador for six months to teach Ecuadorian military and police officers and spent another six months in Paraguay where he taught a similar group of Paraguayan officers. When he was transferred from Panama, he drove the Pan-American Highway from Panama through Central America and Mexico. During this trip he visited numerous Pre-Columbian ruins in Central America and Mexico. Mr. Calderwood left active military service in 1967, attaining the rank of Captain.

In 1970, Mr. Calderwood moved to Peru as the manager of a local branch of an international mining explosives company and remained in that country for the next seven years. He visited most of the archaeological sites in Peru, including Cuzco, Sacsahuaman, Machupichu and the ancient ruins at Chavin de Huantar. He also crossed Lake Titicaca several times and visited the ancient ruins at Tiwanaku, located near La Paz, Bolivia.

Because of his language background and knowledge of Latin America, Mr. Calderwood was again pressed into service by the United States government and became a Foreign Service Officer. During the next 25 years he was a career diplomat and spent many years of his diplomatic career serving in Argentina, Panama, Paraguay, Surinam, Ecuador, and Chile. In more than 30 years of Government service, he has traveled extensively throughout Latin America and Europe.

Mr. Calderwood retired in October 1996 and moved to Texas where he enrolled in the prestigious Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS) at the University of Texas at Austin. He obtained a Master of Art’s degree in Latin American Studies, specializing in the Spanish and Portuguese Chronicles. Over the years, he has accumulated copies of more than 70 chronicles and undoubtably has one of the largest private collections of modern copies of these rare and valuable New World Chronicles of any historian in the United States. He also obtained a minor in Art History, focusing on the Chavin and Moche civilizations in Peru and the Maya and Aztec civilizations in Mexico.

During the last 30 years, he has given numerous lectures in the United States and Latin America on the Book of Mormon and the New World chronicles. He has made extensive studies of the Spanish and Portuguese chroniclers and has written a compendium on many of these early American historians for publication.

Mr. Calderwood has always been an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and has held numerous Church positions in both Latin America and in the United States. He has served as a Bishop and as a Counselor in a Stake Presidency. He is married and is the father of six children.