Gordon L. Shull

Gordon L. Shull, loving husband of Betty Shull (1926-2020) for over 67 years, peacefully passed from his full and accomplished life on April 8, 2023. He was nearly 98. A Wooster resident since 1955, Gordon was the father of three sons: Philip (Jill Bollom), David (Mike Allen), and Andrew (Cheryl Rowland), the grandfather of five, and great-grandfather of two. Born to missionary parents in rural India in 1925, he graduated from Woodstock School in the Himalayan foothills. His education instilled in him a wonder of nature and a love of countless hymns and poems that he quoted until the end. At age 10 he sailed to India out of San Francisco Bay under the newly completed Golden Gate Bridge. At age 17 he sailed back to the U.S. on a freighter that dodged German U-boats. Seeing the horrors of World War II made him a life-long advocate for peace and justice. One of the original "Seagoing Cowboys" in what later became the Heifer International foundation, he tended cows and horses on ships sent in 1945-46 to replenish Europe's decimated livestock populations. Gordon was a College of Wooster Professor for 38 years, co-founder of the College's International Relations major, and was long-time leader of the College-Community Forum on Great Decisions in U.S. Foreign Policy. He was an active member of the Democratic Party, but as a professor he was meticulous about keeping his political beliefs to himself and helped his students develop and articulately express their own beliefs. Ordained church elder, civil rights advocate, frequent preacher and teacher in area Presbyterian churches, interfaith honoree, volunteer reader at nursery schools and English teacher for refugees, Academic Dean of the Lay Academy for Religion, Daily Record columnist, Kiwanian, co-organizer of Wooster's Bicentennial celebration on the Public Square on July 4, 1976, active member of the Cleveland-Akron Foreign Affairs Council and PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), Ohio Light Opera patron, and so much more, Gordon Shull embodied the adage, "The purpose of life is a life of purpose." Over the course of his seven decades as a local community and church leader, he worked to advance urgent contemporary causes such as non-discrimination in housing, peaceful co-existence, and gay marriage. He wrote dozens of published articles and letters on international and social issues. Gordon earned a Bachelor Degree from Manchester College, Indiana, a Master of Divinity degree from Yale, and a PhD from the University of Illinois where he met Betty.