John L. Shaw, M.D. '49

Jack passed away on Wednesday Oct. 1, 2008, following emergency surgery at Abington Memorial Hospital in Abington, PA.  He was 81 and married to Marilyn Morrow Shaw for 56 years.
 
After graduating from the Haverford School, Jack enrolled as a freshman at Duke Univ.  Jack did not find the then young Duke Univ. particularly challenging and transferred to Amherst College after his freshman year.  At Amherst, he majored in biology, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa his junior year and was a member of Alpha Delta Phi fraternity.  He was, or so he claimed, the only one at Amherst who drove a farm pickup truck.  Sid Barteau, one of Jack’s roommates in AD senior year, likes to relate the story of Jack as a chapel monitor being sure all the ADs were marked present at twice a week mandatory chapel services.  The AD House led the College with 100 percent attendance for the year.
 
Jack graduated from Amherst with honors in 1949 and then attended the School of Medicine at the Univ. of Rochester.  While there, he met Marilyn Beverly Morrow, a pediatric nurse, and they were married in 1952.  While Jack was at Rochester, his father passed away suddenly and Jack joined the Air Force, which paid the rest of his way through medical school.  Following graduation, he did his internship at Abington Memorial Hospital, where his three children were born, and his residency in urology at Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia.  After his residency, he served as a captain and surgeon in the air force at base hospitals in the Philippines and Texas. 
 
Jack resigned his commission in 1961 and returned to suburban Philadelphia where he went into private practice at Abington Memorial Hospital.  Jack retired from the practice of urology in his early 60s, and he and Marilyn enjoyed many years of spoiling their grandchildren, bridge games with their friends and international travel.  As age caught up with them, Jack and Marilyn moved to Ann’s Choice in Warminster, Pa., an assisted living facility, where Marilyn still resides.  Jack is also survived by his three children, Robert and his wife Susan; Kathy and her husband Ben; and Carol; and his five grandchildren, Andrew, John, Rebecca, Courtney and Eric, and two step-grandchildren, Andrew and Kristin.
 
—Robert M. Shaw ’76