Shaw, Mary M.

Mary Martell Shaw called Central America home for the first 19 years of her life. Because of misrouted luggage, she met her husband, Rollin H. Shaw, a civil engineer, at a time in when his atomic energy career was taking off. In October of 1943, they married in Costa Rica and for the next two decades traveled the country: Hawaii to California to Panama—wherever a project required Ronnie’s engineering skills. Shaw supported her husband every step of the way, with every new location. She became adept at raising their four kids while packing boxes, enrolling them in school and setting up a warm home wherever they landed. The move to Las Vegas, Nevada in September 1964, however, left her a bit challenged: there was a shortage of adequate housing, a concern for where to send her two daughters and two sons to school, and the feeling that they wouldn’t be here long. Years later, Shaw and Ronnie would retire to the city where their roots ran deepest, Las Vegas.