Julie Shearer

1940 - 2022

Julie Shearer
March 20, 1940 - August 24, 2022
Julie Gordon Shearer cooed "Boo gee boo" when things were good, and she crooned "Bye dee bye" when parting. She loved her musical ear worms, often her own songs. She loved horses from a young age, when she'd take long bus rides for a job cleaning someone's stable; in exchange, the owner would let her ride. She was a Minnesota girl who never let go of her high school group, The Kenwood Girls. She blossomed in California. She emanated warmth and openness. She maintained an ongoing unease about the behavior of large organizations, including her alma mater and her employer. She adored her family and music and animals and the world. She died last August of complications from type one diabetes. She was 82.
Julie was born March 20, 1940, to Alan McDougal Shearer and Virginia Gordon, joining her older sister, Stephanie, and later her younger brother, Alan, Jr. Theirs was a lively home bursting with song. Julie fell in love with musicals - why couldn't life be more like Oklahoma? - though the terror of piano recitals put her off performing. She also discovered the joy of independence, living with a friend during her last year of high school when work took her parents to California. She went on to college at Stanford, where she helped pay her way with a job in a kitchen; it opened her eyes to a different side of the world. She majored in political science and kept a pet rat in her dorm room.
After graduation, Julie worked for the Mill Valley Record, where she interviewed - and ultimately married - the environmental activist David Pesonen. They had two children, Kyle and Amy (her Duckie Daddles), both of whom survive her, and pursued their years-long and successful fight against the Bodega Head nuclear power plant. In battle Julie was tenacious and polite.
After Bodega, she turned her sights on Berkeley's Alta Bates Hospital, which was secretly expanding into her neighborhood. Julie became the leader of the Bateman Neighborhood Association, fought the hospital for two decades and ultimately negotiated a 99-year agreement with the city to limit its expansion. She fought not with anger but joy. At one point she helped find funding for some 50 sycamores in the neighborhood. Decades later, the trees are a living monument to Julie's love for her community. She also led the fight for traffic-reducing barriers and residential-area parking permits in Berkeley.
From 1978 until her retirement in 1994, Julie worked as an interviewer at U. C. Berkeley's Regional Oral History Office of the Bancroft Library. There she conducted interviews with political figures from the administrations of California governors' Brown and Reagan. Among her many other stellar interviews were a two-volume oral history, Sidney Roger: A Liberal Journalist on the Air and on the Waterfront: Labor and Political Issues 1932-1990 ; and a respectful and close look into the lives of S.I. Hayakawa and his wife, Margedant.
It was while working at Berkeley's Regional Oral History Office that she again crossed paths with William Russell [Russ] Ellis, Jr. (Turned out they had met many years earlier at Cazadero Music Camp). They were different in personality and came from very different worlds, but they fit. They delighted each other, made each other giggle and sing; they opened each other up and opened their worlds to each another. (A minor accomplishment: She couldn't utter the word "fart." Russ made a point of saying it frequently. After five or six years, she came around).
Among Russ's early memories of her fiercely independent spirit: a picnic on the St. Croix River, in which Julie's uncle dared her to jump from a nearby train trestle to the water below, some 40 feet. She made her way to the bridge, walked to the edge and promptly jumped, no hesitation. She sustained a bloody nose, ripped her bathing suit and swam like an otter. Russ was profoundly impressed.
They were married in 1992. Theirs became a lively, musical home. Something else had happened during that summer at Cazadero: Music exploded back into Julie's life. She went on to become a founding member of the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir and a co-participant in Rhythmic Concepts, Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to saving Caz's jazz program. Most of all, she became a prolific songwriter over the next 40 years, producing several albums and a children's musical, "Mam Don't Allow," based on the book by Thatcher Hurd. She would often work late into the night on a single stubborn line. When she'd finally crack it, she never wrote it down; her music lived in her head. Much later, after a debilitating stroke, she feared she'd lost that mental catalogue. One, day out of nowhere, she turned to Russ and said "I found it. It's in a different place."
Her deep interest in other people never vanished either. It had been a constant all her life, even the most reticent no match for her affectionate curiosity. At one point, Russ's stepmother had reluctantly agreed to have Julie conduct an oral history. The two were chatting one day when Russ heard a shout from the other room.
"Russ Jr!"
"What's up mom?"
"Am I supposed to say everything?"
In her later years, with diminished sight and hearing, beset by creeping dementia, her world diminished, she and Russ took comfort in nature. They'd listen to music, watch the news, walk along the bay, greet the sunset in their beloved backyard. Julie Shearer was gentle, loving and humane. She loved dogs, photography, Tin Pan Alley. She was devoted to her family, devoted to her friends. She lit up every room and is deeply missed. Boo gee boo, Ms. Doilie. Bye dee bye.
In addition to her husband, William R. Ellis, Jr., Julie Is survived by her son, Kyle Pesonen; his wife, Lynn, and their son, Ryan, of Patterson, Calif.; her daughter, Amy Falzon and Amy's husband, Steve Falzon, and daughter, Delaney Rose Falzon, of Aurora, Colo; her brother, Alan McDougal Shearer, Jr., of Berkeley, Calif.; her nephew, Andrew Tuttle, and his wife, Susan Tuttle, of Wettingen, Switzerland, and their sons, Lucas Tuttle, of Hollywood, Calif., and Simeon Tuttle of Zurich, Switzerland; her niece, Christa Willax, of Schneisingen, Switzerland; her niece, Greta Willax, of Wettingen, Switzerland; her niece, Karin (Willax) McTeague, and her husband, Kyle McTeague, and children, Zoe McTeague and Miles McTeague, of Portland, Ore.
At the age of 6, Julie decided she would not be going to heaven after being informed that dogs were not allowed there. For the first year of their relationship, she often mistakenly called her husband Russ "Caz" after her beloved black Lab, Cazadero. She donated to The Berkeley Humane Society, Berkeley's Cazadero Music Camp, The Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, and Freight and Salvage. She was also a founding member of, and ongoing contributor to Ashby Village. She would have been pleased to learn of your contribution of any size to these organizations. Please contribute in her name.
There will be a musical memorial for Julie at Freight & Salvage, 2020 Addison St, Berkeley, CA, on February 5th, 3:00 to 7:00 p.m. It will be live-streamed.