He studied at Yale University but joined the Army Air Forces when World War II broke out.

He flew 35 combat missions over Europe as a B-17 tail gunner and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Perhaps the most notable public legacy at The New York Times was in 1962 when he had read that civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been jailed.

[1] Shapiro continued to write poetry while working as an editor, publishing a dozen books, including The Eye (1953), The Light Holds (1984) and National Cold Storage Company (1988).

He also edited an anthology entitled Poets of World War II, published in 2003 by the Library of America.