Donald F ("Skip") Shaw Jr

Donald F. Shaw Jr. “Skip”
Birth - May 27th 1944 in Middletown, Connecticut
Death - July 10th 2022 in Rock Hill, South Carolina

Don was the son of the late Dorothy F. and Donald F. Shaw.

He is survived by his daughter’s Jennifer Shaw of King’s Lynn, Norfolk, England and Wendy Shaw of Kechi, Kansas, his Granddaughter’s Ashley and Sacha (Mark Lyttle), who reside in England, along with three beautiful Great-Grandchildren, Rowan, Lil Mark and baby Olivia, of whom he was extremely proud.
Skip will be greatly missed by his surviving sister, Susan Whisonant, who along with her husband Al, has been an incredible and unending support, for not only Skip, but all of our family over the years.

Our appreciation for these acts of pure love and kindness, comes from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you.

Skip was also brother to the late William “Billy” Shaw and Penelope “Penny” Edwards.

We thank his nieces Kristy Austin and Erika Bell, who were a wonderful support to Skip in his final days. Kristy for holding him close in his final moments with the greatest tenderness and reassuring love. I can never find words enough to thank you for the love you showed in those precious moments.
Skip is also survived by numerous nieces and nephews, who have shared his dry sense of humor over the years an laughed along with him.
Skip began work with IBM in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1964. This career would lead him to work in many states and many countries around Europe. Taking his daughter Jennifer along for the ride. Skip would be at the cutting edge of the rise of the computer age, writing programs for IBM’s Honeywell 200 to the programs written for the devices that we hold in the palms of our hands today, that almost hold the world within them. Skip was one of only a few of his peers to have the knowledge base to stay at the top of the programming world to this date.
Skip who took pleasure from literature in the form of a wide range of books, although he loved the classics. Skip had a favorite poem which was ‘If.’ by Rudyard Kipling; which Jennifer will be reading at her father’s internment, as he asked her to do many years ago.
Skip loved music from old time Rock and Roll to the Opera’s. His favorite piece of music being ‘Ava Marie’, beautifully sung by Pavarotti.
Skip loved tending to various vegetable patches he would grow over the years, for them to only be eaten by the local fauna in the form of deer and bears, whilst he was living in Connecticut.
Skip and a group of friends, including his dear friend Frank Rahrig, would play Ping Pong tournaments in the basement along with copious amounts of SMOG pizza, swearing it to be the best in town. The absolute pleasure those evenings gave him was wonderful to see, he always had a broad smile and was heartily chuckling.
Jennifer and Skip would tour historical castles and sites around England during summer holidays. These are cherished memories. They would develop an amazing relationship together, even though an ocean ebbed and flowed between them. Skip was Jennifer’s hero.
Wendy loved their shared sense of humor. He taught her to appreciate nature and attempted to teach her geographical direction; to no avail. He taught her details of histories of many travelled places they shared together.
Both daughters' gained a love for nature and animals in all forms from their Dad.

Skip’s life was lived, in his own way, but lived.

The internment will be private