Earl W. Shagley III

August 7, 1943 - September 29, 2018

Earl Shagley had a life with more interests and activities, more highs and lows, more friends and more love than most people. His wife Carren and daughters Jennifer H.B. Burden and Jessica T.P. Burden Roine, his brother Rick, sisters Ann, Beth, and Sally, son-in-law Ruben Roine, grand-children Gabriel and Madeline, and many nieces and nephews, mourn his passing as do many friends and relatives, not to mention his dog, Luna.

Born in Terre Haute, Indiana to Mary Ann and Earl Shagley on August 7, 1943, Earl graduated from Paul C. Schulte High School and Indiana State College despite numerous, later fondly recalled, teenage escapades. He then became a student in a masters program in film at San Francisco State University, earning a credit as a cameraman for, among other productions, “Behind the Green Door”. Though his film-making was interrupted by the Vietnam War, he retained a lifetime interest in film and photography and turned, in the last decades of his life, to painting. His landscapes are particularly valued by family and friends.

Vietnam was traumatic for Earl as for so many others. Though relatively protected (and decorated) because of his expertise in safe-cracking, he saw and reflected on much violence. Not content with working through his own subsequent issues, he supported the San Francisco organization Swords to Plowshares and mentored many vets as they navigated the challenges of post-war adjustment.

Earl also struggled with alcoholism and around the turn of this century, after quitting drinking for a final time, invested his energies and organizing skills into Alcoholics Anonymous, where he was Secretary of the Bernal Heights chapter and mentored many recovering alcoholics.

No account of Earl’s life would be complete without recording his sense of humor (a wide repertoire including practical jokes, off-color jokes and spur of the moment teasing), his immense skills in cooking (especially BBQ), his joy in bicycling and boating (including as a member of the Bay View Boat Club), his erratic but somewhat successful efforts learning Spanish, his pleasure in travel (especially to Mexico with Carren, friends and relatives), his love of Healdsburg (where he had a second home), and his career in real estate. Of necessity, this remembrance is incomplete. Sadly, so was his life. But when we consider how Earl turned lows into highs, we think it was unusually complete.

In lieu of flowers, donations are suggested to Swords to Plowshares https://www.swords-toplowshares.org/donate/ and Alcoholics Anonymous https://sfmissionfellowship. org/donations/