Kent woman honors husband with cruise to Antarctica | Along the Way

If you and your husband had visited six of earth’s seven continents and he, before dying, implores you to visit the seventh, what do you do?

Judy Shaw did what her late husband, Bruce, asked her to do before he died in September 2023 after a diagnosis of terminal cancer in July 2023. In January, she spent three weeks visiting Antarctica, traveling with Princess Cruises.

The journey was a pilgrimage to honor the memory of Bruce. It began with a flight to Buenos Aires, where tours of the city were available, and then on to Montevideo, Uruguay, and then off to the ice and snow of Antarctica.

Aboard the Sapphire Princess, which has a capacity of more than 2,600 passengers, Judy set sail and enjoyed places like the Beagle Channel, a deep-water ocean passage that is rich in sea life such as sea lions and seals and that was named for the boat that carried biologist Charles Darwin in the 1830s on the voyage that helped him to form the theory of evolution.

The ship’s next stop was Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands, a group of self-governing islands whose ownership is disputed by Britain and Argentina. Its population, mostly Welsh and Scottish, voted its preference for Britain. Fishing is the main industry, although Judy said there is a strong movement against whaling among the Falklanders. The islands are also noted for their bird population.

The cruise continuedsouth to Cormorant Island off Antarctica’s so-named Palmer Archipelago. Cormorant is an important habitat of penguins, shags, giant petrels and other birdlife found in the extreme southern hemisphere.

Still feeling a sense of mourning, she said she kept to herself for much of the trip, but on an excursion to see the birds of the region, said she met a fellow traveler from Cincinnati who helped her with photography.

After Cormorant, the cruise continued along the Palmer Archipelago and the Antarctica Coast, where Judy snapped photos of cold, clear water and snow-covered mountains.

From Antarctica, the Sapphire Princess headed north to its final destination – Santiago, the capital of Chile. But first was a stop to see Ushuaia, near the southern tip of Argentina.

January is the summer season for the southern hemisphere. With temperatures in the 90s, Judy enjoyed the amenities of the hotel, including an open-air, rooftop-terrace restaurant with views of the Andes Mountains until her flight home to the United States and her return to Kent.

The voyage felt different without Bruce, with whom she took a Cunard Line cruise around the world last winter, months before her husband’s diagnosis of advanced liver cancer.

During their almost-38 years of marriage, the two based their lives in Moorestown, New Jersey, where Judy pursued a career in environmental protection and writing. Bruce cared for his father, Roger Shaw, the retired Kent State educator and a widower suffering from glaucoma, who had moved in with them. Bruce was hired by the Cadbury, a Quaker elder care facility, to administer their grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to create America’s first all-inclusive care program for the elderly.

For most of his life, Bruce had been on the move. He lived some of his childhood in postwar Germany where his father, working for the Marshall Plan, helped de-Nazify German history for their education system. Roger Shaw, in the late 1940s, accepted a position in the College of Education at Kent State. In 1961, he took on the challenge of creating the first teacher training college in what is now Tanzania. Bruce was hired by the then-new Peace Corps at age 20 and was among 200 American volunteers to teach in the schools.

Later, pursuing a bachelor’s degree at Syracuse University, he was hired by the Peace Corps to teach some 2,000 volunteers Swahili, a language he had learned while working in Africa. Pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Michigan, he worked for their Institute of Social Research and then spent much of the rest of his career with organizations like National Science Foundation in Washington and agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development in Ghana.

Back at the University of Michigan to pursue a doctorate, Bruce and Judy, who had known each other as children, became re-acquainted after two decades, fell in love and married. It was not the first marriage for either, but the marriage was a happy one that lasted. They watched their daughter Rachel grow up, graduate from Emory Nursing School, and become an expert in communicable diseases. Unable to shake his “Wanderlust,” or love of adventure, Bruce, with Judy, resumed traveling, making several trips to Europe.

Janet and I encountered the Shaw family at different intervals of our lives. Janet, as an undergraduate in the late 1960s, took a class from Professor Roger Shaw at Kent State. She described him as an interesting, no-nonsense teacher who expected much of his students. I first met Bruce when I was 10 years old in elementary school.  Dressed in traditional German costume, Bruce, only 8, was helping his mother, Mary, an elementary school teacher, explain to us youngsters about life in postwar Germany. Kent is a relatively small college town, so our paths crossed repeatedly after that.

Having finished her Antarctica pilgrimage to honor the memory of her beloved husband, Judy is busy now sorting through memories and reorganizing her life at the Kent University Heights neighborhood home she and Bruce inherited from his parents.  Judy is a talented writer and active in the Edith Chase Symposium, which is devoted to environmental issues. Judy has much to say, and with her writing talents can contribute much to the good of the community.

David E. Dix is a former publisher of The Record-Courier.

This article originally appeared on The Alliance Review: Along the Way by David Dix: Kent woman's cruise honors late husband