E.K. Shaw
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NEWTON, Iowa — Dixon native Eustace K. “E.K.” Shaw, former chairman of the board of Shaw Newspapers, died Friday in Newton, Iowa, where he and his wife, Nancy, had lived the past 60 years. He was 84.
Eustace Kilgour Shaw was born in Dixon on July 12, 1925, the son of Robert E. and Susan Kilgour Shaw.
He started with the family business in summer 1936, when the 11-year-old Boy Scout became a “flyboy” at the family’s flagship paper, the Telegraph. He took newspapers off the press, swept up metal from under the linotype machines for reuse, melted the lead, painted, and did other tasks.
It was a job he held until 1943, when he graduated from Dixon High School, where he played football and basketball.
He enlisted in the Naval Air Corps that winter, although he couldn’t begin service until after he graduated.
He enrolled in Milligan College, a small university in Johnson City, Tenn. Then on July 1, 1943, he joined the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which was designed to supplement the force of commissioned naval officers during World War II.
During the war, E.K. became another kind of “flyboy”: He was a crew member on PBYs, flying boats used in anti-submarine warfare, patrol bombing, convoy escorts, search-and-rescue missions, and cargo transport. He served in Panama, Nicaragua and the Galapagos Islands.
It was a skill he maintained after the war, often flying a single-engine Cherokee on business and family jaunts.
He was discharged from the Navy as a Seaman 1st Class in January 1946, 6 months after he married Nancy Kochs on June 26, 1945.
E.K. graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., where he was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity.
In February 1948, he moved to Newton, where he began work at the Newton Daily News.
In October 1969, E.K. led the Newton newspaper conversion from hot type to the new technology of offset printing. The Daily News was one of the first newspapers in Iowa to convert.
E.K. was a member of the B.F. Shaw Printing Co. Board of Directors and was publisher of the Daily News from 1960 until 1981. He became chairman of the board in 1993, and retired in August 2003.
He was active in his community, serving on the board of the Newton Chamber of Commerce and the YMCA. He was a member of the Isaac Walton League, the Elks, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Newton Country Club, and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church.
E.K. also was a 55-year member of the Newton Lodge No. 59 AF&AM; a 50-year member of Gabal No. 12 R.A.M.; a 32nd-degree Mason of the Des Moines Scottish Rite Consistory; and a member of the ZA-GA-ZIG Shrine in Altoona, Iowa, and of the Oriental Commandery 22 Knights Templar.
In addition to what E.K. called his passion “for putting ink on paper,” he was an avid hunter and fisherman, and loved gardening and travel.
Former Shaw Newspapers General Manager Bill Burfeindt and E.K. were lifelong friends – they met baling papers one day at the Telegraph.
Burfeindt, now of Peel, Ark., said that not only was E.K. a progressive, forward-thinking newsman, but he also was a genuinely nice man. In their six decades of friendship, never did a cross word pass between them, Burfeindt said.
“He was just a wonderful person to know,” Burfeindt said Sunday. “And I’m sure going to miss being able to call him up and talk to him now and again.”
“E.K. was a great booster of the Newton community,” Mason Senior Grand Warden Wade E. Sheeler said in a posting on the Pence Reese Funeral Home Web site Sunday.
“He cared greatly about this community and was always willing to step forward to help out with projects to make Newton better. He will be greatly missed.”
E.K. is survived by his wife; sons, William E. (Amy) Shaw of Grand Detour, founding publisher of Sauk Valley Newspapers; and Robert A. (Lillian) Shaw of Taos, N.M.; grandchildren, Charles (Carrie) Shaw, Meredith Shaw, Michael (Liz) Shaw, and William Shaw; and sister, Janet (Bill) Loring of Fruita, Colo.
Services for E.K. Shaw
A memorial service for E.K. Shaw will begin at 11 a.m. Saturday at Congregational United Church of Christ in Newton, Iowa. A memorial fund for the Newton YMCA has been established.
Pence Reese Funeral Home is handling arrangements; remembrances and condolences can be posted at pencefh.com online.
