I was able to fix this problem by wrapping the content and footer divs within a larger div per jimjimmy's answer above. These are the details: First I created a new div id in common.css, "content-shadow".
Then I added the box-shadow attribute plus copy/paste attributes from my content-wrapper div so the site would format correctly. In my case it looked like this:
#content-shadow {
border-left:0px solid #E7E7E7;
border-right:0px solid #E7E7E7;
border-bottom:0px solid #E7E7E7;
border-top:0px solid #E7E7E7;
background-color:#FFFFFF;
margin:0px auto 0px auto;
margin-bottom:0px;
margin-top:0px;
width: 1000px;
box-shadow: 0 0 15px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6);
}
Next I placed a div in the header.php file of my theme before the "content-wrapper" div. Saving that file I moved to the footer.php file and placed a tag at the end of the file in the appropriate place. For me this was above "content-bottom-empty-space" div so I could have a little space on the bottom of my site.
Save the file and now it will/should propagate throughout wordpress. I hope this helps somebody in some way.