Gary Lee Caballero

This life sketch is not intended to provide a comprehensive history of Gary’s life, but rather to highlight aspects of his story that many may not know. A quiet, soft-spoken man, Gary lived a rich life marked by curiosity, devotion, and steady service.

Gary Lee was born on March 12, 1945, to Mary Adeal Stevenson and Howard Lee Neil in Glendale, Los Angeles County, California. When Gary was about a year and a half old, his parents divorced. At age six, his mother married Robert Aaron Caballero—only after asking for Gary’s permission. Robert later adopted Gary, changing his surname from Neil to Caballero, and raised him as his own son. (As Gary liked to joke, this is how you can have a Hispanic last name without looking Hispanic.) Gary’s children grew up adoring their Grandma and Grandpa Caballero.

Around this same time, Gary began taking piano lessons. While many parents encourage their children to practice, Gary’s mother often had to persuade him to stop practicing and come to dinner, especially during his teenage years. He later took up the cello and played in both junior high and high school orchestras. He served as a piano accompanist for fellow student soloists and played piano in a junior high jazz band, where he learned to improvise and play by ear.

At about age fifteen, Gary pulled a New Testament from his mother’s bookshelf and began to read it. Around this time, while walking home from school, he met the youth pastor of a nearby Baptist church, who invited him to attend their meetings. Gary hadn’t been accustomed to going to any church, but he accepted, was baptized into the Baptist Church, and soon became their pianist.

During junior high and high school, Gary and his best friend, Alan, taught themselves electronics by building projects together. Their favorite place to shop was Radio Shack, where they found surplus circuit-board components. One of their most ambitious projects was an elaborate, electronically controlled “junk sculpture” built in the large attic of Alan’s house. With the flip of a single switch, balls rolled along tracks and loops, triggering levers, gears, lights, neon signs, and sound effects.

Each Halloween, they hosted a neighborhood event they called the “Boolablatz.” Children were wheeled down the driveway in a wheelbarrow before being led through a homemade haunted house. Alan played the role of Dracula, while Gary operated switches behind the scenes, activating lights, sounds, and moving contraptions. One particularly memorable moment in the tour occurred at the bottom of the attic stairs, when Gary triggered a train—made of painted boxes with lights—that barreled down the stairs, horn blaring, stopping just inches from the children.

After graduating from high school in 1963, Gary enlisted in the U.S. Air Force for four years. He wanted to serve in the Air Force rather than being drafted into the Army for the Vietnam War. His background in electronics qualified him to maintain and repair the navigation systems of B-52 bombers. He spent several months stationed in Okinawa, where he devoted his free time to studying specification manuals and running simulations rather than playing cards. He made a point of being the designated driver when fellow servicemen went into town, but often chose instead to spend his own time visiting a nearby village. There he formed friendships, learned to make box kites, and helped residents with their English.

While stationed at Kincheloe Air Force Base in Michigan (part of the Strategic Air Command), Gary’s diligence and technical mastery caught the attention of his superiors. One night, he was called into the central office to help remotely correct the course of a B-52 aircraft flying dangerously close to Russian airspace due to a navigation malfunction. Gary immediately identified the problem and instructed the navigator how to correct it, allowing the aircraft to safely adjust course and avert an international incident.

At the conclusion of his enlistment in 1967, Gary was encouraged to re-enlist in recognition of his exceptional skill and service. He chose instead to return home to Pasadena after an honorable discharge, ready to pursue new challenges. He rented the attic of Gary’s mother’s gabled house while Alan was serving in the Army in Germany—the attic where the junk sculpture still resided. While living there, Gary built an elaborate model train layout and worked at a local printing company.

In late January 1969, Gary met his future wife, Candy Stewart, while playing in the Pasadena Community Orchestra. Candy played first violin, and Gary played cello. They were introduced by a mutual friend, Shirley, who invited them to play in a pit orchestra for a regional quartet festival sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Alan returned from Germany about this time, and the four became close friends.

Alan had joined the Church while serving in the Army in Germany and soon introduced Gary to it. Gary recognized its truth immediately and was baptized on March 15, 1969. Not long afterward, he was asked to serve as ward organist, a calling he would hold in nearly every congregation he was part of.

Gary, Alan, and Shirley brought Candy to church activities and meetings week after week. Candy lovingly argued with them, trying to reclaim them, having been taught by her well-meaning Lutheran pastor something that wasn’t actually true about their religious doctrine. Eventually Candy experienced a miraculous conversion and complete turnaround and was baptized on July 26, 1969. Gary and Candy were sealed for time and all eternity on January 23, 1971, in the Los Angeles California Temple. From the moment he met her, Candy was the love of Gary’s life. Together, they were blessed with six children, and Gary was Candy’s built-in piano accompanist for her violin performances.

Gary never pursued formal academic degrees beyond high school and Air Force training. He joked that he never received his “sheepskin.” Nevertheless, he was a relentless self-learner, immersing himself in electronics, mathematics, computer languages, and advanced physics. He was an avid reader of electronics and math textbooks, computer language code manuals, and even books by the likes of Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose. His way of learning was hands-on with the guidance of specific textbooks and software manuals.

He taught himself to program on the job at Hewlett-Packard with some help from the engineers there and cobbled together a calculator and display (possibly one of the first PCs). He programmed it to automate the quality control testing of circuit boards, cutting the testing time in half. That was the thing he enjoyed doing most, automating manual processes.

At the University of Minnesota Duluth, Gary served as technical support for the Dean of Engineering. He maintained and automated laboratory equipment, supported the robotics lab, and wrote programs to streamline administrative work. He helped select an open operating system for a new engineering building and ensured its wiring could support what would become the internet. When personal computers emerged, Gary embraced them fully and remained, by choice and conviction, “a DOS man.”

Gary later ran his own consulting business. For one crane company, he developed a program to calculate crane configurations based on customer needs. He knew this would require some trigonometry, so he re-read a trigonometry textbook just for this purpose.

He also developed software for a long-range, low-frequency electric meter transmitter known as the “Turtle,” which allowed rural electric cooperatives—particularly in places like Alaska—to remotely read meters over power lines. Gary also wrote the customer interface software and effectively became the system’s customer service department.

Building on that success, Gary and three partners developed a short-range meter-reading and power-control system for apartment buildings and urban environments. The business was successful and showed strong promise, which likely drew the attention of a much larger competitor. This competitor filed a lawsuit that was eventually dismissed as unfounded, but it drained the partnership financially and forced them to abandon the venture.

Gary later founded a business dedicated to digitizing genealogy books, carefully scanning pages, applying OCR, and tagging names and dates for seamless import into genealogy databases.

Gary loved animals and children. His favorite place at church was on the floor of the nursery, playing with the toddlers, or in Primary, teaching three-year-old Sunbeams or playing piano for singing time. He frequently served as ward clerk and ward organist and was called as a temple organist in 2010, subsequently serving as the temple organist coordinator for several years until he was called as a counselor in the ward bishopric. Together, Gary and Candy also served as temple workers, managed the Taylorsville Food Pantry, worked as election poll workers, participated in CERT, and remained deeply engaged in community service and emergency preparedness.

Beginning around 2017, a series of mini-strokes gradually slowed Gary down. Concentration became more difficult, and playing the piano and organ required increasing effort. Still, he continued to practice diligently until he no longer had the physical strength to serve as ward organist, a loss that deeply saddened him when he asked to be released in the summer of 2023.

What mattered to him most, and brought more joy to him than anything else, was having his family around him. Every night, including the night before he passed, he and Candy thanked Heavenly Father for helping them find the gospel and each other at the same time, for sending them such wonderful children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and for the hope of being together forever with each other and with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. He is survived by his wife, Candy, and all six of their children: Cassandra Legge (Ty), Jeromy Caballero (Katie), Jennifer Ordiway (Kip), Mary Caballero, Ben Caballero, and Michael Caballero, twelve grandchildren, and five great-grandsons.

Friends may call at 10 am on Tuesday, December 23, 2025 at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1495 South Tamarack Rd, Taylorsville Ut, 84123. The funeral will follow at 11 am at the same location. 

Interment will be at the Utah Veterans Memorial Park, 17001 South Redwood Road, Bluffdale, UT 84065.