Professor Nadine E. Shank

Geraldine Haas Shank, “Jerrie,” was born on January 12, 1919, and died on January 31, 2020, at the age of 101. She grew up in Mantua, Ohio, moved to Aurora, and lived with her mother on the family farm which had no indoor plumbing or running water. Highly ambitious, she graduated from Kent State University in 1941 with a BS in Education. Early on, she taught in a one-room schoolhouse. Later, she taught 4th-6th graders for thirty-two years in the greater Akron area.

Music formed the core of her life. Her mother was a silent film pianist and Jerrie always sat on the piano bench along with her mom. Her father was a violinist. At a girls’ school, Jerrie directed both the high school chorus and orchestra. She was a church soloist at Akron’s Fairlawn Community Church. For five years, Jerrie directed the St. Celia Choir, an 80 member all-girls choir at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Akron, the largest Episcopal Church in Ohio. She then sang for several years with her daughter, Nadine, at the Episcopal Church of Our Savior in Akron.

Jerrie was the high school counselor and secretary for the Akron Tuesday Musical Club, serving for forty years at the local and state levels of the Ohio Federation of Music Clubs.

The big band era preceding WWII brought Jerrie and her future husband, Wayne Shank, together. They met when Jerrie was the vocal soloist and Wayne played clarinet and saxophone in the Finn Baker Band at dances at Silver Lake and Aurora’s Geauga Lake and Brady Lake amusement parks and Akron’s Summit Beach. They married in 1941 just before Wayne served 3 1/2 years in the U.S Army in N. Africa and Italy, landing at Anzio and Salerno beachheads. Jerrie continued to sing with big bands during and after the war.

Their only child Nadine was born in 1954. Jerrie avidly supported Nadine’s interest in music, driving her to Cleveland or Youngstown every Friday evening for seven years so that Nadine could study with a fine piano teacher. This dedication paid off as Nadine served as Professor of Piano and Collaborative Piano at UMass Amherst for 40 years.

Upon her retirement from teaching, Jerrie took up a duplicate bridge and became a Junior Master, later competing via the internet with players worldwide. She took up aerobics at age 50 in Akron and remained physically fit well into her 80s through aerobic dancing in Akron and Amherst. Nadine and Jerrie shared an unusual closeness, taking many trips to Europe and Latin America before and after Jerrie’s retirement. Jerrie lived her final years independently in a condo in Amherst, MA where she was the condo association’s treasurer for six years.

In July 2020, Jerrie was buried by her only surviving relative, Nadine Shank, at the family gravesite in the Aurora (Ohio) cemetery.