G. Peter Shiras

Orr’s Island, Maine — G. Peter Shiras, 83, of Orr’s Island, Maine, died peacefully on Feb. 9, 2010, after a short illness, at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston, Mass., surrounded by close family members.

Peter was an educator and a teacher and spent 58 years teaching English.  

He was born in 1926 in New York City and attended St. Bernard’s School in New York and the Dublin School in New Hampshire.

He served in the U.S. Navy in World War II and then graduated from Yale University. In 1950 he married Rosemary Shove of Cazenovia, N.Y.  

After a year as a journalist with the Minneapolis Star Tribune, he began his teaching career at the Nichols School in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1952. He spent a year in Athens, Greece, on a Fulbright grant to teach at the Polytechnion University, and then became the headmaster of the Potomac School in McLean, Va., in 1961.

During these years, Peter played an active role in the civil rights movement.  He was instrumental in introducing the first African-American students to the Potomac School in the early 1960s. In 1964, he traveled to St. Augustine, Fla., where he volunteered with Martin Luther King’s organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, in an act of civil disobedience to desegregate public facilities in the south. He and several African-American colleagues jumped into a “whites only†swimming pool and were quickly surrounded by local police and vigilantes. He was arrested, spent five days in jail, and was one of the many foot soldiers in the fight for justice and civil rights.

In 1964, Peter returned to teaching and he and his family moved to Istanbul, Turkey, where he taught at Robert Academy.  In 1966, he became interim headmaster of Robert Academy.  

From 1967 to 1975, he taught at Eastern High School, where he helped start the Freedom Annex, a program to empower African-American students, the Hawthorne School and the Sidwell Friends School, all in Washington, D.C.

In the summers, he and his wife taught at the Salisbury Summer School in Connecticut. In 1975, Peter moved to Lincoln, Mass., and taught at the Cambridge School of Weston until his retirement in 1990 to Norfolk, Conn., and Orr’s Island.

Peter continued teaching adult education courses at the Taconic Learning Center in Lakeville, at the Faith United Methodist Church on Orr’s Island and the Church on the Hill in Lenox, Mass.

He served on the board of trustees of the Dublin School from 1980 to 1992 and received the Paul W. Lehman Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1994 from the Dublin School. He also volunteered at the Mid-Coast Medical Center in Brunswick, Maine, during the last year of his life.

He was a teacher his whole life, a master storyteller, a font of knowledge with an insatiable curiosity, a lover of boats and birds, opera and the sea, poetry and Shakespeare, golf and his golden retriever, Jamie.

He was devoted to his wife of 58 years, Rosie Shiras, who pre-deceased him, and he was loved dearly by his family and a wide circle of friends.  

He is survived by his daughter, Natalie of Lee, Mass.; his son, Peter of Lutherville, Md.; four grandchildren, Alexander of Denver, Colo., Annie of Burlington, Vt., Tess and Chloe of Lutherville,; and three brothers and a sister.

In lieu of flowers, contributions may be sent to the Orr’s Island Library, the Orr’s Bailey Fire and Rescue Department, the Orr’s Island Cemetery Association or the Southern Poverty Law Center.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday, March 6, at 1 p.m. at the Old School House on Orr’s Island.  

Arrangements are under the direction of the Brackett Funeral Home in Brunswick, Maine.  Condolences can be expressed at brackettfuneralhome.com.