Charles "Charley" Allen Shively From Ohio To Massachusetts

Charles "Charley" A. Shively

Charles "Charley" A. Shively was born on 8-Dec-1937 in Stonelick Township, Clermont County, OH and died 6-Oct-2017 in Cambridge, MA. He was the son of Mearl Carlton Shively (born 19-Dec-1915 Clermont County, OH and died 28-Jan-1970 in Fairfield, Butler County, OH) and Florence Lillian Potrafke (born 25-Aug-1916 in Brown County, OH and died 6-Sep-1996 in Butler County, OH).  Mearl Carlton Shively was the son of Avery Mearl Shively (1895-1977) and Della Davis. Avery Mearl Shively was the son of James Henry Shively (1861-1905) and Mary Franklin Brown (1861-1936). James Henry Shively was the son Jacob Shiveley(Shively)(1806-1866) and Elinor Ann Hornback (1820-1881). Jacob Shiveley was the son of Daniel Shively (1778-1868) and Mary Boyer (1782-1836). Daniel Shively was the son of Christian Shively (1751-1842) and Catherine Sophia Smith (1752-1821). Christian Shively was the son of Christian Shively (1718-1773) and Esther Neff (1719-1803). Christian Shively was the son of Christian Shively (1683-1752) and Barbara Spitteler(1689-1759). Christian Shively was the son of Durs Schaublin (1650-1690) and Margreth Straumann (1653-1683) who have a well documented Swiss lineage. (Photo at left was extracted from Find-A-Grave wanting to give credit to the submitter).

Extracted from Bay Windows,  Boston, Massachusetts, Friday, October 20, 2017 is the following:

Charles Shively 1937-2017

Charley Shively, one of the pivotal figures in the Gay Liberation Movement, died Friday, October 6th at the Cambridge Rehabilitation and Nursing Home, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He had been a resident since June 2011, suffering from Alzheimer's. He would have been 80 on December 8th 2017.

At the 1977 Boston Gay Pride march, Shively became infamous for his burning of the Bible as well as his insurance policy, Harvard diploma and teaching contract -- as a protest against oppressive institutions. This act of incendiary and effective political theater - it nearly caused a riot - later obscured his work as an organizer, scholar, poet and publisher.

Born in poverty in Gobbler's Knob, Ohio in 1937, Shively excelled in high school and entered Harvard College in 1955. After being granted a Masters in History at the University of Wisconsin in 1959, he entered the Ph.D. program in History at Harvard. During this time he worked at Boston State College where he was active in New University Congress, anti-war working groups in the American Historical Association, and other anti-Vietnam war activities. His graduation from Harvard in June of 1969 coincided with the Stonewall Riots; that summer Shively began what was to be his life's work: Gay Liberation. His vision of Gay Liberation was deeply, and uniquely, inflected by his study of, and belief, in anarchism. After helping form Gay Men's Liberation in Boston he worked on the first issue of Lavender Vision, a 1970 co-gendered Gay Liberation newspaper, and a year later helped form the Fag Rag collective, which published the first national post-Stonewall gay political journal.

In Fag Rag Shively published a series of twelve essays that became foundational to post-Stonewall gay male political theorizing. Written in a conversational tone with a mixture of personal confession, everyday anecdote, Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, Mikhail Bakunin, Kate Millett and Shulamith Firestone, these influential pieces became canonical. During the next decade the ever-changing "Fag Rag" collective was held together by Shively's presence and persistence. He was also responsible for founding Fag Rag Books, the Good Gay Poets collective and Press (which published noted poets such as John Wieners and Ruth Weiss) and Boston Gay Review, a journal of cultural criticism.

Along with his political essays Shively's academic work included the six volume edited Collected Works of Lysander Spooner (1971) - a nineteenth century social anarchist - and A History of the Conception of Death in America, 1650-1860, his doctoral dissertation (1987). His groundbreaking research on Walt Whitman resulted in two books - Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working Class Camerados (1987) and Drum Beats: Walt Whitman's Civil War Boy Lovers (1989) - which he viewed as an expression of political commitment as well as academic research. A lifelong poet - he first published poems in high school - Shively wrote at least one poem a day. His Nuestra Senora de los Dolores: the San Francisco Experience was published in 1975. He was active in the Boston poetry scene, particuarly Stone Soup Poets. Shively understood himself primarily as a poet - his poems were spare, imagist, almost religious -  a word he would have rejected - and mystical in their intensity. He leaves three finished poetry manuscripts.

During the 1970s and 1980s he was involved in numerous LGBT organizations, was  founding member of Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, and along with Fag Rag, wrote frequently for Gay Community News, Gay Sunshine, The Guide, and poetry journals. Almost always dressed in overalls, and speaking in his slow, southern Ohio drawl - an inflection he often used for ironic effect as he made his arguments - he was a ubiquitous figure at political meetings and rallies. During this time, he taught full time, traveled to Kenya, Ecuador and Vietnam on three Fulbrights, and was hired as a tenured professor at University of Massachusetts-Boston in the American Studies Program, after Boston State closed in 1982.

Shively's partner beginning in 1964, Gordon Copeland, died in 1994, the year Shively was diagnosed with HIV. He retired from University of Massachusetts in 2001 and began exhibiting signs of Alzheimer's a few years later. During this time he traveled to Paris to do research on homosexuality and the French Revolution.

Charles Shively's legacy in his writings, and also in the example of his insistent refusal - always with humor - to follow the rules, and often not even to acknowledge them.

The picture at the left and the following information was found in the Dayton Daily News, Dayton, Ohio, Sunday, June 19, 1955, Page 4, Column 6:

Five From Area Win Harvard Scholarships

Charles Shively son of Mr. and Mrs. Mearl C. Shively, 2117 Tuley rd., Hamilton, is holder of one of Harvards regular freshman scholarships. He attended Fairfield tp. high school.

The following was extracted from the Daily News Journal, Hamilton, Ohio, Monday, June 6, 1960, Page 6, Column 8:

Masters Degree

Charles A. Shively, 2117 Tuley Rd., son of Mr. and Mrs. Mearl Shively, received a master's degree in history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisc., during annual commencement services.

A 1955 graduate of Fairfield High School, Mr. Shively received his bachelor's degree in 1959 from Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude. He plans to re-enroll at Harvard this fall to study for his doctorate in history.

A newspaper obituaries for Mearl Carlton Shively, father of Charles A. Shively follows.  This article was found in The Daily News, Thursday, January 29, 1970, Page 35, Column 2:

Mearl Shively Rites Friday

Funeral services for Mearl Carlton Shively, 54, 1333 East Ave., who died Wednesday at 7 a.m. while leaving work at the Hamilton Plant of the Fisher Body Division, will he held Friday at 2 p.m. in the Zettler Funeral Home, 2646 Pleasant Ave. The Rev. R. B. Baker, pastor of the Stahlheber Road Baptist Church, will officiate.

Burial will be in Greenwood Cemetery. Friends may call a the funeral home Thursday from 6 until 9 p.m.

Mr. Shively was born in Bethel, Ohio, Dec. 19., 1915,  a son of Avery Mearl and Della Davis Shively and received his education in the public schools of that area.

He married Florence Lillian Potrafke Jan. 9, 1937, in Cincinatti. They came to Hamilton in 1948.

Name Family

A welder, Mr. Shively had been employed at the Fisher Body Plant since 1947.

He was a member of Hamilton Lodge 36, Loyal Order of Moose and belonged to Local 233, United Auto Workers.

Mr. Shively leaves his wife; his father, A. M. Shively, Batavia; three sons, Dr. Charles A. Shively, Boston, Mass., Stephen and Mearl C. Shively Jr., both of Hamilton; two daughters, Mrs. Russell (Ilene) Baker and Mrs. Don (Jean) Harbaum, both of Hamilton; three grandchildren; a brother, David Shively, Cincinnati; other relatives and many friends.

He was preceded in death by his mother and a brother, Roy Shively.

Blaine Shively Who Lived In Strasburg, Tuscarawas County, Ohio

Blaine Shively was born 17-Nov-1910 in Strasburg, Tuscarawas County, OH and died 12-Sep-2004.  Blaine Shively was the son of George W. Shively and Katherine Kalmbach.  (For more information on this Shively line see the Shively blog article written on Friday, 22-Nov-2013). George W. Shively was the son of George Shively and Elizabeth Gravis. In 1936 Blaine Shively was married to Gwen Wendling. Blaine Shively was a well known musician and co-founded the Shively-Yates orchestra with William Theodore Yates.  

The following article was extracted from The Times-Reporter, Dover-New Philadelphia, Ohio, Monday, August 24, 2009, Page A2, Columns 1-4:

Blaine Shively Made Sweet Music

Blaine Shively of Strasburg was a well-known figure in the Tuscarawas County music scene for more than a half a century, laying drums with popular dance bands such as the Shively-Yates Orchestra and the Rhythm Club.

During his career, Shively performed an impressive total of 61 New Year's Eve engagements, including 53 consecutive holiday gigs.

Shively was born at Strasburg on Nov. 17, 1910. At an early age, his parents made him take piano lesson, something he didn't enjoy. He was more interested in learning the drums. Finally, when he was 14, his father consented to buy him a cheap set of drums. His practicing didn't set well with the neighbors, who thought he played too loudly.

While a student at Strasburg High, Shively formed a band with three other young musicians. The group never landed any paying jobs but did get to play for free at high school functions.

His first paying job was performing with the Johnny Arndt band at Mount View Park at New Philadelphia. Shively earned $2.

After playing with several area groups, Shively joined a band at Ohio Northern University at Ada, known as the Northerners, in 1932. Shively spent two years touring with the band, performing throughout Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Pennsylvania. He earned $28 a week plus free room and board.

Two years of living out of a suitcase proved too much for Shively, who quit the Northerners in 1934 and returned home.

That fall, he and William Yates of Strasburg, a well-known saxophonist and pianist, formed their own group, Shively-Yates and their Ace Collegians.

The orchestra was an instant success. In the years that followed, the group performed in every city in Ohio except Cincinnati.

In 1936, Shively-Yates played 27 nights in December, for a total of 299 engagements that year.

The band's home base was the Spanish Ballroom at Dover, where it played every Monday night. One evening, Shively-Yates drew such a large crowd onto the floor that the dancers cracked the window in the drugstore on the first floor of the building according to Raymond "Skeets" Botdorf, who played trumpet with the group.

At a performance at the Spanish Ballroom in 1935, Shively met his future wife, Gwen Wendling of Dover. They were married in 1936.

Shively-Yates had several "girl singers" over the years, beginning with June Souers of Dover in 1934.

One of the best known was Jerry Baker of Brewster, who later auditioned for Benny Goodman's band after he heard her sing at Ohio University at Athens, where she was a student. Baker often sang in a trio with band members John Stone and Robert Angel. Stone  later became a professor at Ohio University, where his students included the McGuire Sisters.

Other vocalists included Wanda Davis of Dover and Julia Swier of Massillon.

WIth the coming of World War II, Shively-Yates lost most of its members to the military. Shively continued to perform with the Phil Mason band, which played six nights a week at the Casablanca at Canton. After the war, he tried to reorganize Shively-Yates with no success.

In 1947, he formed the Rhythm Club along with Bob Neumiller, Paul Kneppelt and Babe Matthews.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he worked with the Dorothy Blaine Trio and with a group called Night Train in the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to his son, Blaine Shively Jr.

To support his family Shively worked at Republic Steel at Canton, owned and operated by Shively Cleaners at Strasburg and drove bus for Strasburg schools. In addition to music, he drove stock cars in the 1950s, racing at the Strasburg Speedway and other local tracks, his son said.

Shively continued to perform even after he and Gwen retired to Florida, working with the Downing Trio in the Daytona Beach area. His last performance was in 1996. He died Sept. 12, 2004.

Article by Jon Baker. Jon Baker is editorial page editor of The Times-Reporter. He can be reach by e-mail at opinions@timesreporter.com.

The following was found in the Times Reporter, Dover-New Philadelphia, Thursday, September 16, 2004, Page A5, Column 6:

Blaine Shively

Blaine Shively, 93, a resident of Port Orange, Fla., and a native of Strasburg, died Sept. 12, 2004.

Before retirement, Mr. Shively was the owner of Shively Cleaners in Strasburg. He was a lifetime member of the American Federation of Musicians. He was a drummer all of his adult life in several local bands, including the Shively-Yates Orchestra, which he co-founded. He was also a race car driver and owner, having participated in stock car and drag racing.

Survivors include his wife of 68 years, Gwen of Port Orange, Fla.; a son, Blaine and his wife, Janice of Port Orange, Fla.; and a sister, Ruth Pfeiffer of Canal Fulton, O.

Memorial donations may be made to the American Red Cross.