Shirley Mayhew

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Shirley Mayhew. Photo by Andrew Franklin
Courtesy Deborah Mayhew

Shirley Walling Mayhew was born on April 27, 1926, in the Bronx to Ethel Piner Walling and Clifton L. Walling. She and her sister, Marian Walling Mohr, were raised in Crestwood, N.Y.

Shirley attended Pembroke College at Brown University in Providence, R.I., for three years, where she met Islander John W. Mayhew. He had recently returned to complete his degree at Brown, which had been interrupted by his service as a fighter pilot in the Pacific in WWII. John brought Shirley home to visit his family on the Vineyard and proposed in a duck blind, where he had brought her to teach her to hunt. They were married in 1947, and settled in West Tisbury, where they spent the rest of their lives, most of it in a home they built on Look’s Pond, off Music Street. Shirley and John had three children — a son Jack and a daughter Deborah, who both live in West Tisbury, and a daughter Sarah, who lives in Davis, Calif., but spends Christmas and summers in West Tisbury.

During her years on Music Street, Shirley served on the West Tisbury school board, was children’s librarian, then a volunteer, in the Music Street Library for a year, when it was an adjunct to the new library, joined the NAACP and actively participated in the civil rights movement, volunteered at the M.V. Historical Society (now the Martha’s Vineyard Museum), and served a year as Sunday school superintendent in the West Tisbury Congregational Church. 

In 1963, while her children were still quite young, Shirley returned to college, and after two years earned her bachelor’s degree from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt. From that experience she published a book — “Seasons of a Vineyard Pond.” She loved to joke about the fact that she still had many hundreds of copies of that book, because the publisher did an initial run of 5,000 copies, even though there probably were not that many people on the whole Island at that time.

From 1966–86 she was employed by the Edgartown School as a junior high teacher of Language Arts to grades 6, 7, and 8. Along the way she also completed a master’s degree, writing a thesis on that age group. She found she truly loved teaching, and over her years of retirement she received many wonderful letters from her grown-up students, thanking her for being their favorite teacher at that complex time in their lives, influencing their paths in life, and providing them with foundational skills which contributed to their later careers. She also enjoyed seeing students all over the community as they grew up and took local jobs.

Having lived only in Crestwood, N.Y., Providence R.I., and West Tisbury for more than 40 years, Shirley developed an itch for travel once her children were mostly grown. She began traveling in 1968, and by 2004 had visited 14 states and 25 foreign countries, and gone on 11 trips to six Caribbean Islands. She made repeat visits to a tiny mountain village in Peru, where she became a beloved benefactor, raising money each year for the village school. Shirley made many friends during her travels whom she kept in touch with the rest of her life through letters, Christmas cards, phone calls, visits, emails, and Facebook connections.

Shirley discovered she had creative talents as a young adult. While her own children were still very young, she taught herself photography — which in those days required a darkroom and developing skills — and hired herself out as a children’s portrait photographer. She started dabbling in watercolor painting in her 80s, and sold some of her paintings at artisans’ fairs.

Starting in 1992 and continuing through her last week of life at 94, Shirley published essays and photographs in MV Magazine, Prime Time Magazine, the Vineyard Gazette, The MV Times, Edible Vineyard, Brown Alumni Magazine, and Martha’s Vineyard Writing. Before that she had articles and photographs published in Parents Magazine, Grade Teacher Magazine, Pembroke Alumnae Magazine, Colorado Magazine, International Travel News, and the Dukes County Intelligencer. She also sold travel stories to the Providence Journal, Chicago Tribune, and Boston Globe. In 2014 Shirley self-published a memoir, “Looking Back — My Long Life on Martha’s Vineyard,” which she sold through local bookstores and at local artisans’ events. She had since self-published four additional books: “Islander: The Circus Comes to Martha’s Vineyard,” illustrated by her good friend Linda Carnegie, “Living Life with the Grace of a Butterfly,” “Paucartambo — A Midlife Adventure from Martha’s Vineyard to Peru,” and “Around the World in Thirty Years.” 

One highlight late in her life was being invited to tell a story at a live performance of “The Moth Radio Hour” at the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs, in August 2013 at the age of 87, in front of an audience of nearly 2,000.

Shirley was blessed with three granddaughters — Caroline, Lucy, and Katie (a.k.a. Siren), whose lives she participated in from birth to adulthood, as they were all raised in West Tisbury. Being Nana to her three granddaughters — babysitting frequently and even taking them all on trips around the country and abroad — was one of her greatest sources of joy, combining her love of family with her love of travel.

Shirley’s husband John entered Windemere in 2008, and died in 2012, after 64 years of marriage. That year she moved out of her beloved Pond House off Music Street into an addition she built onto her daughter Deborah’s home on Panhandle Road in West Tisbury.

After moving to Panhandle Road, she was blessed to be able to participate in the weddings of two of her granddaughters and the engagement of her third, and to become a great-grandmother three times over. She was proud to be a member of a four-generation household for the past two years.

For all her successful creative and professional endeavors and worldwide travels, it was her role as wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and community member that was most important and most satisfying to Shirley in her long life in her beloved West Tisbury. Her unconditional love, admirable role modeling, and constantly positive and upbeat personality will be very much missed by all her family and many friends.

Shirley was predeceased by her husband John Wesley Mayhew in 2012, and is survived by her son Jack, his wife Betsey and their children Caroline and Lucy; Caroline’s husband Daniel and their two children, Luna and Wren, and Lucy’s fiancée Griffin McMahon; her daughter Deborah; Deborah’s daughter Siren, son-in-law Sean McMahon and their daughter Isla; and daughter Sarah and her partner Bob Boys. All but Sarah and Bob live in West Tisbury. Shirley is also survived by her sister Marion Walling Mohr and her son Steve Fletcher and his wife Janice, her daughter Linda Leland and her family, and three nieces — Lee Dixon, Susan Rust, and Martha Groton — on her husband’s side and their families.

Donations in Shirley’s name can be made to Hospice of Martha’s Vineyard (hospiceofmv.org), who were of immeasurable help during Shirley’s last days; or to the West Tisbury Library Foundation; or Martha’s Vineyard Hospital (mvhospital.com) where all of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren were born.