Richard “Dick” Shaw was born in the morning of June 3, 1936 in the small frame house of his maternal grandparents. The house was located in Walsenburg, a small coal mining community in southern Colorado.

Dick lived and went to school in Pueblo, Trinidad and Longmont, Colorado. His parents moved the family to central Denver in the mid-1940s. He attended South High School.

Dick Shaw met May “Sweats” at the Golden Lantern coffee shop in Denver in 1955. They were soon a couple, spending time exploring the foothills and mountains west of Denver, working on his car, and enjoying most of the sports events of South High. They often went for their “cherry coffee” at the Hi Hat Drive In afterwards.

In 1957, a couple of weeks after his twenty first birthday, Dick decided on a different adventure and, along with two of his friends, enlisted in the US Coast Guard. There was a small recruiting office in Denver.

After he completed boot camp Dick was accepted to and completed Electrician Mate school in Groton, Connecticut. He was assigned to active duty aboard the West Wind, an ice breaker based in Brooklyn, New York. The general area of service was the east coast up into the Arctic Circle.

In 1959 Dick took a “mutual” (an exchange of duty between two equal-rated service members) and began his duty as the electrician aboard a 95-foot search and rescue boat based in Long Beach, California.

Dick and May were married in June, 1959, at Knotts Berry Farm in Buena Park, California. Their first house was a fixer upper in Buena Park about a mile from the Berry Farm. For the final ten months of active duty he was reassigned as electrician to the Coast Guard base in Groton.

Dick was discharged and his family moved back to California. He went to work for the Anaheim School District as an electrician. After a couple of years he was offered a position with a private company installing and servicing driver education equipment. Soon the company expanded and 1970 brought one final relocation when Dick was transferred to Denver. Dick worked from home, traveling twelve of the western states. His customers began to ask him to sell them equipment directly. Dick added the title of Salesman to his job description.

He and May bought a home in south Denver where they loved and lived for over 51 years. It was a perfectly great house but was still under constant consideration for another DIY project. The yard also underwent frequent changes. An every-summer activity was the six hundred square foot produce garden.

All the travel was not much fun anymore and Dick took an early retirement in 1993. One of his interests was working with his hands and he found a select number of people who would pay very well for his work in and around their residences. He was also designing and making custom furniture.

Dick discovered a class in wood carving at a senior center. After several years he had enough skills and knowledge that he replaced the teacher, who retired. At that same time he began graphite pencil drawing, emphasis on portraits, and took classes in watercolor painting. Dick remodeled the attached garage into a studio. He spent many hours there with his art projects, listening to jazz.

If you have a special story or memory about Dick please share it here with us so we can all enjoy knowing him a little better.