Shirley Craig

Shirley Jane (Prada) Craig, a renaissance woman with lifelong passions for music, art, travel, and adventure, died peacefully on Jan. 5, 2026, at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, surrounded by family. 

A third-generation native Islander, Shirley was born on July 13, 1935, to Albert and Genevieve Prada of Edgartown. When she was 6, both she and her father were diagnosed with tuberculosis. While her father convalesced at a sanatorium in Pocasset, the family moved to his parents’ dairy farm on Clevelandtown Road, where Shirley spent a year recovering and doing her schoolwork at home.

Shirley later attended the K-12 Edgartown School, and at the age of 12 began working summers at Conner’s Market in Edgartown, where her mother was the bookkeeper. She worked nine-hour days, six days a week, saving all of her money to put toward her college education. Once her father returned from the sanatorium, he taught Shirley to surfcast, at the time an activity engaged in almost solely by men. She braved the skepticism of the Island’s cadre of seasoned fishermen, quickly winning them over with her enthusiasm and competence.

While in high school, Shirley played on the girls’ basketball team, and was one of only four students in the “college course” from her graduating class of 12. Her French teacher spoke often of his interest in competitive fencing, sparking her own curiosity about the sport.

Shirley attended Boston University’s Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences, and while studying to become a physical therapist joined Salle Elde, a private fencing club nearby. There, by serendipity, she met the love of her life, Philip Craig, a top fencer on the Boston University team. One night, Phil agreed to take over the class when the regular teacher was absent, and he and Shirley literally met over crossed swords. From that moment on, only death could separate them. The college expected its students to focus on academics, not courtship, and Shirley would recount the elaborate ruses she played on her vigilant dorm supervisors in order to sneak out and visit Phil on weekends.

They were married on Dec. 10, 1957, in Phil’s hometown of Durango, Colo. While living out West, Shirley worked as the only physical therapist on the Navajo reservation in Farmington, N.M., and later ran the physical therapy department at Durango’s Mercy Hospital. She recalled that many of her patients were skiers who had been a bit too reckless while careening down the San Juan Mountains.

Shirley was adamant that her children be regarded as true Vineyard natives, so traveled back to the Island to have her first child, Kimberlie, in October 1959. In January, Phil was accepted into the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop, and the family moved to Iowa while he completed his master’s degree. They returned to Martha’s Vineyard, where Shirley worked as a lifeguard at State Beach in Edgartown, and where her son, Jamie, was born in April 1962. In September the family moved to Beverly, and a few years later settled in Hamilton, where they would remain for more than 30 years.

Phil taught at Wheelock College in Boston, and Shirley worked as a substitute teacher in the Hamilton and Wenham public schools, and as a learning disabilities teacher at many schools in the North Shore area. While Shirley was tutoring a dyslexic student at the Harbor School in Newburyport, the Boston PBS television station featured her in a program about her success in teaching the student to read, and how her efforts helped turn his life around.

Phil took a sabbatical in 1973, and the family traveled throughout Europe and North Africa, and then drove across the entire U.S. Bitten by the travel bug, Phil created a college course that included an annual trip to England, and Shirley would accompany him and his students on the trip each year. She and Phil became well-known in many of the smaller pubs in England and Scotland, where they made lifelong friends.

They began to travel as often as possible, visiting more than 43 countries throughout Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa, North and South America, and the Pacific Islands. Their home boasted artwork and memorabilia from around the world.

Phil and Shirley hosted many dinner parties with friends, which often included guitars coming out and the friends singing a round of folk songs. Shirley also began a long tenure of playing recorders in a local group each Thursday, which Phil referred to as “toodling night.” She played often in the local chamber music society, and once for the London Recorder Group while visiting England.

Always involved with art, Shirley created lavishly decorated Easter eggs, covered ornate glass bottles with macramé, did crewelwork and Jacobean embroidery, and created amazing pottery on the wheel that Phil made for her.

Summers were spent on the Vineyard in an old cabin in Ocean Heights, which until the late ’60s had no electricity or running water. Shirley’s time was devoted to sunny days at State Beach with her kids, fishing, shellfishing, gardening, and cooking, both for the family and for market. Shirley sold breads, muffins, vegetables, jams, and smoked bluefish at the West Tisbury Farmer’s Market, the same goods that garnered her and Phil dozens of blue ribbons at the Island’s Agricultural Fair. Friends would gather

at their house for lavish clambakes every summer, and a favorite escape was to sail their catboat, the Shirley J., to Tarpaulin Cove for overnight adventures.

After Phil retired in 1997, he and Shirley replaced the old cabin with a proper, winterized house, and they moved to the Vineyard year-round. Both avid surfcasters, they became active in the annual Derby, both as participants and as board members. Shirley was active in the Friends of Sengekontacket, working to preserve the pond from pollution. She continued her love of music, playing the ukulele and drums in Vineyard groups, and she and Phil sang together in the Island Community Chorus for many years. They continued to travel extensively, adding trips to writers’ conventions and speaking engagements around the world as Phil’s novels became more popular.

Theirs was the love of a lifetime, and they did virtually everything together. If one of them was away for a short time, the other would mope around the house, eagerly awaiting their return. In 2006, a decades-long project came to fruition when their cookbook “Delish! The J.W. Jackson Recipes” was published. The popular cookbook included their favorite recipes, many of which had been featured in Phil’s long-running Martha’s Vineyard Mystery series.

Tragically, Phil succumbed to a fast-moving cancer in 2007, passing a few months before the couple could celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. Shirley took his place on a planned trip with Jamie to Jordan and Egypt, and the entire family completed a trip to the Yucatan Peninsula, which Phil had long planned. Shirley also traveled to New Zealand with Kimberlie, and made many trips to Colorado to visit her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She further enjoyed frequent excursions to the Boston Symphony with a group of senior friends from the Island.

Shirley remained active in the Community Chorus and other endeavors until health issues began to restrict her activities. During COVID, she remained primarily alone at home, filling her hours with a hobby for which she became quite renowned. She would collect smooth rocks and paint them with designs and illustrations so detailed that soon every visitor was commissioning a rock painting for themselves. Her guilty pleasure was the soap opera “Days of Our Lives,” which she watched continuously from the ’60s until she moved to the Windemere Nursing Home in August 2025. 

While cognitive decline and health issues made her later years difficult, she continued to enjoy the company of friends new and old, and made sure that her family knew how much she loved them. She would give copies of “Delish” to anyone she met, which served as a springboard to talk about Phil, and she’d recount that he would often tell her, “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.” Of her marriage, she would tell people, “I can’t imagine it being better than it was.”

As her memory faded, as it became difficult to form words and express ideas, what remained steadfast in her mind and heart was that so very long ago, she met the love of her life by crossing swords with him. One of her final requests was for Jamie to make her a picture of crossed swords with a heart in the center, to symbolize how she and Phil had first met. She received that picture for Christmas, and treasured it until she passed a short time later.

Shiley was predeceased by her parents, Albert and Genevive Prade of Edgartown, and her husband, Philip R. Craig of Edgartown. She leaves her sister, Joyce Goldfield of Inverness, Calif.; children, Jamie Craig of Edgartown and Kimberlie Craig Schwartz and her husband Steve of Durango, Colo.; grandchildren, Jessica Ipson and her husband Blake of Erie, Colo., Peter Harmon and his wife Sam Kasper of Wichita, Kansas, Bailey Lynch of Durango, Colo., and Riley, Amelia, and Griffin Craig of Edgartown; and great-grandchildren Frankie and Finneas Ipson of Erie, Colo. 

A celebration of life will be held at the Edgartown Rod & Gun Club on Saturday, June 13, at noon. All are invited.