Earl Shanken

Earl Shanken A retired business executive and longtime Marin County resident whose service as a World War II Air Force navigator earned him a Distinguished Flying Cross and an honorary knighthood from the French Legion of Honor, died Wednesday at his home in San Rafael. He was 95. With his fierce golf swing, cheerful addiction to chocolate, and extraordinary reserves of energy, Mr. Shanken remained vigorous throughout his life. As a student at the University of Chicago, he was an NCAA gymnastics champion, winning three national vaulting titles, and his competitive spiritat baseball, golf, poker, bridge and eventually bocce balldid not diminish with age. "The bocce court is not a place to enjoy sunshine," his wife Jeanne wrote in a birthday tribute five years ago. "For Earl, it is an arena." Born in St. Louis, one of twin brothers, Mr. Shanken studied biological science at Chicago before enlisting in the Army. He and his late brother, Courtney, served in an Italy-based squadron, the 450th Bombardment Group, flying dozens of combat missions over enemy territory during the buildup to the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Mr. Shanken almost never spoke to family or friends about his grim war experience. As he told a Marin I-J reporter in 2011, when the French government named him a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in gratitude for his service, the 450th contained more than 60 men, only 13 of whomincluding both brotherssurvived the war. "I'm lucky to be here," Mr. Shanken said. It was through mutual friends that Mr. Shanken met his first wife, Flora Gorney, who had been born and raised in Mexico and was attending the University of Chicago. The couple moved in 1954 back to Mexico City, where they raised their two children, Carole and Wendy, while Mr. Shanken learned fluent Spanish and ran the Latin American division of the label-making company DYMO. In 1975 they relocated to the Bay Area, where the family of Flora's brother had settled. They found a home in Sausalito, and after Mr. Shanken's retirement from DYMO, he remained professionally active for many years, working as a real estate agent and volunteering for the business mentoring group SCORE. The Shankens' marriage lasted 45 years, until Flora Shanken's death from cancer in 2001. In 2006, after another fortuitous introduction by mutual friends, Mr. Shanken married the former Jeanne Griffiths, a San Rafael resident and former assistant to Senator S.I. Hayakawa. During the final days of Mr. Shanken's life, while Jeanne and hospice workers cared for him, she maintained such affectionate composure that she was able to describe his courtship of her as a dud first date followed by spectacular recovery. (There was one story involving his appearing at her front door bearing a tub of chocolate ice cream, a tub of guacamole, and a single long-stemmed rose.) For that 90th birthday appreciation, Jeanne recounted Mr. Shanken's unflagging sense of humor, his kindness, his love of good scotch, his passion for the San Francisco Giants, and his penchant for directly speaking his mind. "He is an extremely honest mana rarity to find these days," she wrote. "Earl is still telling it like it is." In addition to his wife, Mr. Shanken is survived by daughters Carole Robin, of Palo Alto, and Wendy Cavendish, of Quebec, Canada; son-in-laws Andy Robin and Dennis Cavendish; stepchildren Marilyn Ann and Dick Armanino, of Henderson, Nevada, and Roslyn Malkin, of Chesterfield, Mass; and grandchildren Nick and Molly Robin. Funeral services will be private. Friends are invited to gather at the Spinnaker Restaurant in Sausalito at 2:00 p.m. Monday, August 8 for a celebration of his life. The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, or Marin County's Hospice by the Bay.