Peter Hamilton Shattuck

Born 11 July, 1935 in Worcester, MA to Roger Whipple Shattuck and Emily Mayo Sutton Shattuck; died 27 September 2015 under hospice care at home in Sacramento from complications after cancer surgery. His family is deeply grateful to Sojourn Hospice and Island Angels. Peter grew up in Providence, RI, graduated from Moses Brown School '52 and Yale '56. After 2 years in the US Army, mostly in Korea, he did his graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, where he met his wife Elizabeth, also in graduate school. They married in New York City in 1960, and lived in Berkeley until he joined the Department of History at California State University, Sacramento in 1965, where he had a long and distinguished career. Peter was devoted to teaching and his students, winning the Outstanding Teaching Award in 1994. One of his colleagues said, "He brought a quiet but unmistakable passion to the classroom that couldn't help but convince his students that history mattered and it mattered a great deal." He was also deeply involved in campus- and system-wide governance, serving on the Academic Senate of the CSU from 1980-88, retiring as Secretary, and many years on the CSUS Faculty Senate (Chair 1972-3 and 1984-1987), as another colleague said, "bringing civility to that institution. " Among his other university and civic activities, he spent a year as History Department chair, served as campus Ombudsman, wrote with Dr. Suzanne Snively the first University AIDS policy, worked for four semesters in the Academic Advising Center and served on the board of the Sacramento History Museum. After retiring, he spent many years on the board of the CSUS Friends of the Library, some of them as President, and was Vice President of the CSUS Retirees Association from 2001 through 2010. Peter read widely and deeply, beyond the scholarly works of his profession. His interests, as well, were wide and deep - architecture, art, music, geography, conservation, cultural history and much else. "When I read about a place, I want to know what it looks like, I want to know what goes on there." He saw for himself, on three visits to Greenland over 10 years, the disappearance of glaciers; he saw what it was like to live in a village in Mali with no source of clean water; he saw for himself the Magadan gulag in Siberia, among the very first outsiders to do so. He walked (scrambled, stumbled) twice the last six miles of Shackleton's trek across South Georgia Island. He was always investigating, always learning. He and Elizabeth traveled to, by Century Club Guidelines, 98 countries and islands, with 2 more by himself in Army days. Peter loved baseball, books, gardening, good food and wine, classical concerts, plays, museums, and his family and many friends. He leaves his wife of 55 years, Elizabeth, sons Arthur (Janet) and John (Julia), grandchildren Jessica, Samantha, Amanda, Peter II, Emily, Peregryn, and William, and 2 great grandchildren. There will be a gathering in honor of Peter's life on Monday, Oct. 26 at the Nepenthe Clubhouse, 1131 Commons Drive, Sacramento, from 4-7 pm. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to the Peter H. Shattuck Scholarship Fund at the Sacramento Region Community Foundation, or Chanticleer, or Planned Parenthood.