Anne S. Shullenberger

Anne Shaw Davis Shullenberger

Was born September 18, 1919 in Indianapolis, the daughter of Paul Gray Davis and Anne Johnston Shaw and died on January 2, 2015. Anne ("Rusty" to many of her friends, thanks to her red hair) attended School 66 with long-time friends including her cousin Jane Shaw, Mary Stuart Socwell and Malcolm McVie. Summers she went to Pinewood Camp where she won The Best Camper Award. At dancing school, she always felt grateful to John Ryan for dancing with her. Anne then went to Shortridge High School and graduated from Tudor Hall in 1937, attending Swarthmore College and graduating with a BA in English literature in 1941. There she made many lifelong friends including Jane Northup White, Jane Cox Vonnegut, Marge Todd Simonds, and Sally Lindley Ehrich. Her college beau, Phil Wood, was killed in the Pacific during World War II. While she was on a date with Ransom Griffin at the Blue Bird Inn in 1945, he introduced her to his friend, a dapper young vet named Gale Tilton Shullenberger. She and Gale were married in Indianapolis on June 8, 1946 at 555 East 37th Street, Anne's childhood home. Gale's niece Mary Shullenberger was their flower girl, and Gale's father, the Rev. William A. Shullenberger, officiated. Anne's father gave her and Gale the house as a wedding present and it was there that she and Gale started raising their own family. She soon became famous for the games she invented for all the children on the block including the Kenneys, Levins, McAuliffs, Livingstons and Geralds. In her young married life she was an active member of the Junior League, and in later life joined the Colonial Dames.

Anne was an avid reader all her life and was famous in her family circle for her readings of "A Christmas Carol" on Christmas Eve, her rendition of the exchanges between Scrooge and Marley's Ghost being especially hilarious. She was a gifted writer: she wrote stories and was inducted into the Fiction Writers' Club at Shortridge and her letters to children and friends captured many a prize moment and personality. Anne enjoyed being a longtime member of The Indianapolis Woman's Club with her good friends Patty Jameson Cochran and Susan Gatch Ashby. She also encouraged other younger friends to join, including Jean Rogers Lowry, Sukey Kenney Nye, Anne Ehrich Riley, and Maggie Dean. She and Susan Ashby became "Flora" and "Stella" for their Woman's Club conversation about the Bluestockings, and the nicknames stuck for the rest of their lives. (Stella's family became her "Constellation" while Flora's was referred to as "Fauna.") Other memorable papers included one on Dickens' influence on Dostoevsky, and several recounting adventures in Europe. On one of her trips to Paris, she got mixed up and instead of saying "Bonjour" to her daughter Anne's neighbor, she told him, "Je t'aime."

Sports and outdoor activities were an important part of Anne's life. She loved gardening and birding with Bud Starling and Marion Ransel, helping her children collect butterflies and leaves and going for walks with Gale. After driving into the gulley at the age of sixteen with her friend Ann Crume in the passenger seat while both were looking at the boys at Woodstock Country Club, she remained a member there for many decades, playing golf, tennis, and paddle tennis with good friends Sylvia Peacock, Jane Rauch, and Barbara Kothe. During her early motherhood, she took her children daily to the Lilly Pool to swim laps in the frigid spring-fed water.

Anne loved playing duplicate bridge with a big group of friends headed by Charlie Houston at Judy Birge's house, going to bridge parties at Alice Usher's house, and doing the Sunday Times crossword. Family vacations give her children many treasured memories of Maxinkuckee with the Greenleafs, Lake Okobojee in Iowa, and the last big vacation to Scotland, England and Ireland where the family visited Anne's cousins Marjorie Herd, Gerald Shaw and his wife Denise Mantoux who had been in the French Resistance; Max Jones, a noted psychologist and his beautiful Swedish wife Kirsten; and Harry Shaw, who had been a British naval officer during the war.

"Rusty" was also a member of Darn Yarners, a group of old friends started by her dear friend Judy Davis, who died a day before Rusty, and their other friends Mary Jo Griffin, Sue Anne McVie, Susan Ashby, Nancy Engelhardt Janet Symmes, Bug Kittredge, and Libby Miller. She was a devoted friend across generations, visiting older friends including Blanche Stillson and Gran Fan Preston and mentoring the young including Mike Mahoney who loved talking books with "Mrs. Chocolate". Anne enjoyed the company of all her children's friends and welcomed them with laughter and interest in their exploits. For many years she was a docent at the Indianapolis Museum of Art where she loved introducing children from inner-city schools to great works of art. She is well-remembered for her comic roles in Dramatic Club plays with Dick Cochran as well as for the lively parties she hosted for friends, relatives, and children at her and Gale's second home at 5921 Central Avenue where she became fast friends with their neighbors the Horths. She had great affection for the family pets, most of all Muncie, the Georges and Pink, the daughter of her friend Jane Ryan's Christie. Through all her life Anne retained her impish sense of humor and an interest in literature, art, people, and in the astonishing experience we call life.

Anne's religious life was catholic: it began with Aunt Christine Socwell, a dear friend of her mother's, taking her to First Presbyterian Church. When she was older, she and her father would go on Sundays to Sheridan to her great-grandfather Newton Jasper Davis's farm and enjoy nature and each other's company. At Swarthmore Anne became a member of the Quaker Meeting. Back in Indianapolis, she and Gale attended Central Christian Church while her father-in-law was the minister there. Later the family had Sunday school at home, with the family singing the Doxology accompanied by Trilby the airedale's howling. Still later Anne and Gale became members of Second Presbyterian Church.

Gale and Anne have three children: Paul Davis Shullenberger of Chicago, Mark Tilton Shullenberger (John Lamborn) of Indianapolis and Anne Johnston Shullenberger Levy of Belmont, Massachusetts, and three grandchildren: Benjamin Gabriel, Léa Naomi, and Elizabeth Hannah Levy. One son, Benjamin Wendell Shullenberger, died in infancy. Anne's brother Theodore Philip Davis died at birth. Her nephews, nieces, and cousins include Mary Shullenberger (John) Rosebrough, John (Dianne Gomnes) Shullenberger, William Shullenberger, Daniel (Susan Bourke) Shullenberger, Jan Shullenberger, Alan (Denise Rinehart) Shullenberger, Ann Shullenberger (James) Saye, Virginia and Brenda Bass, Jim (Lisa Stone) Cunning, Anne Bosworth, Sylvia Long, Jonathan (Bernie) Speers, David (Maureen) Speers, Lindley (Scott Henry) Speers and Nancy Cunning and Jeff Eaton. She was also "Aunt Rusty" to many of her friends' children including Steve, Ruthie, Lee and Scott Davis and Butch, Widge and Tad Griffin, godmother to Tom Ehrich, and big sister to Andy and Jean Rogers, and Connie and Susan Caddick. Anne's love extends to her great nieces and nephews and their families, including Jenny, Wendy, John, Eric, Hannah, David (famous for calling her "Uncle Anne"), Mary, Luke, Eden, Geoff, Monte, Leah, Mary Katherine, Matthew, Ross, Catie, Jon and Jeff.

The family would like to thank Rita Whalley for her devoted friendship to both Gale and Anne in their latter years, and to Denise Middleton, her other helper, whose good humor and gravelly voice brightened "Ms. Anne's" days. The family also cherishes memories of the dear helpers Anne had from her childhood through motherhood who include Hedwig Roch, Minnie Burger, Marie Schatz, Dorothy Tardy Sweeney Foster, Sadie McLemore and Hue Binny Moss; and continues to be grateful to Dick and Carolyn Bourke, relatives who always included Gale and Anne at their Thanksgiving celebration with their loving family and to Betty Gomnes, a relative whose friendship Anne has treasured over the years. In recent years, Anne, John and Mark have spent many warm and welcoming Thanksgivings and Christmases with the Allamels who became Anne's French family in Indianapolis, and being included in the holiday celebrations by the Cunning, Nolan, and Drybrough-Shepherd families.

Anne was preceded in death by her parents, brother, husband and four aunts who helped raise her: Helen Davis Smith, Gray Davis Williams, Virginia Shaw Rockwood, and Josephine Shaw Chambers, as well as by her other Shaw aunts and uncles: Daisy, Blanche, Landis and John; her Shaw cousins Smiley, Dodie, Bill and John, and her Davis cousins Corky, Jane and Walter. Anne enjoyed Osborne and Gettie Speers and their children Anne, Madelaine and David with whom she and her father shared many a Sunday dinner. Also the family fondly remembers Anne's friends who became honorary aunts and uncles including Jack and Jane Rogers, Jerry and Evie Caddick, Guernsey and Edith Van Riper, Emmett and Alice Fertig and Kurt and Edith Vonnegut. Anne was close to Gale's parents William and Grace (Tilton) Shullenberger and his brothers and their wives, Wendell, Mary Eleanor (Davis), Shully and Betty Lou (Fraling) Shullenberger, all of whom predeceased her as well.

Anne spent her last years with John and Mark at their house on 23rd and Alabama that she had christened "Tag End" since when it was being built she said it looked like "the tag end of nowhere." Actually it was only a few blocks from the house on 20th and Central her parents were living in when she was born as well as the homes of her maternal grandparents Jack and Josie (Landis) Shaw at Forest Home on 13th and Park, built by Ovid Butler, and her paternal grandparents Theodore and Anna (Gray) Davis on 15th and Park which is now a Victorian Walking Garden. Donations may be made to the IPS Education Foundation/ Shortridge IB High School, Swarthmore College or the Indianapolis Museum of Art. A service will take place at the Gothic Chapel at Crown Hill Cemetery at 10:00 on Saturday, January 24. A celebration of Anne's life will take place at Woodstock Country Club afterwards. Please check http://www.leppertmortuary.com for details.