Jeanne Claire Maurer Shutes

1924 - 2017

Jeanne Maurer Shutes

Oct 3, 1924 - Dec 29, 2017

Jeanne Claire Maurer Shutes, Ph.D. was born in New Haven, CT, in 1924. Her father, who died suddenly when she was four, was an early immigrant from the Ukraine and her mother, from a farm in Michigan, became one of the first registered nurses in America. Her brother, 11 years older, predeceased her. She grew up during the Depression and earned money parking cars on her front lawn for attendees on the way to Yale football games. From the age of eight on, she was fascinated by photography and took pictures of her schoolmates and pets with a celluloid camera. Throughout her life, she was to own many cameras. Ninety of her photographs appear in The Worlds of P'otsunu, the biography of a Native American woman artist she would later co-author with Jill Mellick.

Jeanne's elementary school teachers quickly noted her intellectual abilities. Not content with the school's reading, she rode her bicycle to the library weekly and took out four books, the maximum allowed. At thirteen, she won a scholarship to board at Northfield Seminary in East Northfield, Mass., at that time the largest girl's private school in the country.

From Northfield, she was given a scholarship to help attend Wellesley College. In the winter of 1942, Wellesley closed for three months to conserve fuel for the war effort. Jeanne, who had spent her first college semester skipping classes and reading fiction in the library, needed credits. So she persuaded a local university to let her take a course—thus becoming the first woman undergraduate to be admitted to Yale.

After graduating from Wellesley in 1946, she taught English at Westover School in Middlebury, CT. She enjoyed the experience but wanted to write so applied to graduate programs and when, in 1948, she was offered a job at Stanford University as an Assistant Dormitory Director at Branner Hall, she enrolled in a Masters program and was awarded her MA in English in 1950.

That year, she and Robert Shutes, a fellow student, were married, and Jeanne obtained a teaching position at Sequoia High School, where she taught for a year. The school district required her to resign when she became pregnant with Christopher, born in 1952. After a year at home with Chris, Jeanne was invited by Castilleja School to teach English, which she did for two years--thereby making her and Bob's daughter, Marjorie (Jorie) the first girl to attend the school before she was born. After a year at home with Jorie, Jeanne found a loving babysitter and went on to teach at the College of San Mateo and Foothill College as each opened. The couple divorced in the mid 1950s.

Fascinated by Jungian psychology, Jeanne entered Jungian analysis with Bertha Mason, M.D., one of the founders of the San Francisco Jung Institute. She began to take psychology courses at San Jose State, then offered a psychology class for adults in her home, and soon persuaded Palo Alto Adult Education and the First Congregational Church to sponsor the first daytime adult education class in humanities offered in the State of California: Self Awareness through Literature. Her five seminars in literature were attended by thousands of adult students for over 50 years, making her reading groups some of the first and certainly the longest running in the nation. She continued teaching the seminar until November 2017. Many adult students remained in her seminars for decades, and she led them in reading and discussing over 500 books.

After the assassination of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jeanne and her adult students needed to respond to the report of the Kerner Commission, which they studied in Jeanne's seminars. Out of their study came the founding of the Black Community Relationship association to help ameliorate the alienating conditions of "white racism." The "BCRA aides" raised money over a three-year period given to East Palo Alto leaders to help fund a BCRA cultural center.

In 1970, Jeanne drove to the Southwest to learn more about the art and culture of Hopi, Navajo, and Pueblo peoples. She met Geronima Montoya, teacher and Pueblo artist, who welcomed her into San Juan Pueblo. Jeanne and Dr. Jill Mellick spent the next 18 summers in Santa Fe learning about Pueblo culture, serving psychology internships with the US Public Health Service, making many friends in the Pueblos, and writing Montoya's biography, The Worlds of P'otsunu (UNM Press 1996).

After earning her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology in 1983, Jeanne practiced as a Jungian-oriented psychologist as well as continuing to teach her literature seminars.

At 59, she began to travel the world independently with Jill, often returning to the Greek islands and Kyoto.

She is survived by her son Christopher (Elizabeth Abello) and daughter Marjorie "Jorie" Chadbourne (Chet); granddaughters Tara La Bounty (Kevin); and Paloma Shutes (Matt Mimiaga); soul mate of 42 years, Jill Mellick; devoted friends worldwide; her adoring dogs, Kami and Zoe; and her cherished bonsai.

Gifts in her name may be given to the Palo Alto Animal Services, 3281 East Bayshore, Palo Alto, CA 94303; and the National Museum of the American Indian, 4th St SW & Independence Ave SW, Washington, DC 20560.