[1] His father was an executive with the Grand Union grocery-store chain, and his mother a homemaker.
[1] He graduated from Hamilton College, in Clinton, New York, in 1962, with a BA in philosophy, and completed a master's degree from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in 1963.
In December 2016, he suffered pneumonia and kidney disease and was hospitalized.
Doctors discovered cancer in his chest and he died on January 31, 2017, in Medford, Oregon.
Most of the collections of David Shepard and Film Preservation Associates are held at the Academy Film Archive as part of the Lobster Film/Film Preservation Associates Collection.