Lasting Memories

Mary Ann Shallenberger
1915-Jan. 15, 2011
Palo Alto, California

Mary Ann Shallenberger, 95, a Palo Alto resident for many years, died Jan. 15, 2011.

She was born in Spokane, Wash., and first came to Palo Alto to attend Stanford in 1932. Graduating in 1936 with a degree in speech and drama, she met her husband Frank Shallenberger and moved to the Boston area.

After birthing three sons in Worcester, Mass., she returned with her family and had a fourth son in Palo Alto.

A world traveler in her earlier years, she and her husband took their four sons out of school to travel around the world for a year in 1956. In 1964, she and her husband moved with their youngest son to Lima, Peru, where her husband was part of the founding faculty of a Stanford-initiated business school.

She was an officer in several Bay Area companies, including Shalco, Dynaship, and Materials Analysis. She also owned and operated the Menlo Park store Abacus, where she sold Asian art and antiques.

She held leadership positions in several community organizations. A longtime leader in the Family Service Mid-Peninsula and the Bay Window, a restaurant supporting the work of the Family Service, she received acknowledgement as an "Everlasting Guardian Angel" of the Bay Window.

She was preceded in death by husband Frank Shallenberg, who died in 1991. Husband Philip Sherman, whom she married in 1992, died in 2010.

She is survived by sons Edward, of Omak, Wash., Frank of Cupertino, Robert of Kamuela, Hawaii, and David of Dummerston, Vermont; nine grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.