From: Kevin Van Nortwick
Shawn and his family moved to Yakima from Montana I believe during our sophomore year at WVHS. They lived just off of 88th and Summitview in a cool split-level house. His dad John was the General Manager for Buttrey Foods, the grocery store at Superama on the corner of 16th and Lincoln Ave. Tom Williams, Mike Hahn and I all became close friends with Shawn. There was a lot of tennis in the mornings before high school started, some fun gatherings at Mike and Tom’s houses playing foos ball and pool, listening to music and just hanging out together. Lots of car washing and waxing, golf, floating the Yakima river, etc. along the way. French class with Madame Kreiger was an important time for us all. I believe Tom, Shawn and I all did three years of French class together. Shawn was able to go on the summer class trip to Europe one summer along with Jeff Trammel, Mike and many others, which I heard was a blast. During our Junior and Senior years in high school both Shawn and I worked at Superama and we got even closer as a result. After high school, he went to YVC, while Tom, Mike and I went to the UW. After a year I returned home to Yakima and went to YVC for a 9 months - Shawn and I had a lot of fun together during that time at YVC along with my Mom, Rick Monnot, Tom Behar, Marty Wilson, and many others. I returned to the UW in the spring of 1980 and roomed with Tom Williams, then he, Mike and I headed back to Yak for that summer. That was the last summer I lived in Yakima, and I think that was the same story for Tom, Mike and Shawn. Shawn and I normally got off work at Superama around 11pm and Mike and Tom would be waiting for us with tennis racquets. We would head to 7-11 and get large Big Gulps of Diet Coke and head to YVC and play under the lights until the wee hours of the morning.
Shawn and I decided to go to the UW to finish our undergrad studies so we all decided to rent a very nice five bedroom home up by Northgate along with a buddy from Seattle named Dean Namba. It was a very fun year, but also very busy. Dean and Shawn were working evenings loading trucks at UPS, Tom was working at FX McRory’s down by the King Dome, while I was working at the Tradewell grocery store in Magnolia. I clearly remember watching a lot of Star Trek late at night with the guys, playing tennis and racquetball, eating fast food, and studying. Also seeing Rush, Boston, Jethro Tull, and several other bands in concerts at the Seattle Center together. There was a fun road holiday road trip to Sun Valley for five days of skiing which was awesome. Just me, Shawn and Tom W. During that year we had some important visitors in Seattle from the high school days. Marty Wilson and Kristin Schwab, Tom Behar, Rick Monnot, and several others.
Shawn decided to get an MBA at Seattle University and did so successfully. Jeana and I got married in December of 1984 and he, Mike, Tom Williams and Tom Behar were in our wedding party. Shawn met a nice lady named Dana and they got married a couple of years later and lived on Mercer Island, but unfortunately it didn’t last very long. They divorced, after which Shawn moved to Vegas and was working as a banker. He later worked in Dallas as a Trust Officer with Wells Fargo. Eventually he moved back to Vegas and then to Montana and continued in the banking business. He was married two more times. I met up with Shawn, Tom W and his wife Jennifer, along with Shawn’s Mom (Saint Barb) and Dad for dinner when I was in Nevada for a business golf event in probably 2008. Shawn and Jennifer had a beautiful luxury home in Henderson and had life by the tail at the time. Everything seemed well. Shawn and Jennifer had a son named Jonathan.
We kept in touch by phone and email, and then a few years later I received a call from Shawn letting me know he and Jennifer were calling it quits and he was moving from Henderson to Missoula to be near his Mom and Dad. Eventually he was diagnosed with frontal temperal dementia and I received a call from his little sister Jonna telling me he had been moved into a residential home for dementia patients and he only had a few years to live. Our daughter Sarah and her family live in Missoula so on our trips to visit them I would stop by and hang out with Shawn at “the home”. He was quickly losing it mentally, but it was strange, he could remember stuff we did in high school and college pretty well, but didn’t have a grasp on day-to-day stuff. It was like he was stuck in a time warp and kept repeating things that were very important to him from back in the day, over and over. The staff there let him have two little cigars and two glasses of wine after dinner - one night we had a fun and memorable evening where I took him out for a steak dinner then we went out on the deck at the home and listened to his classic rock playlists and reminisced about times long past. That was a good and important time with him.
It's very sad he is gone, sure miss him. I recently spoke with Jonna and it sounds like Shawn’s ex-wife Jennifer and son Jonathan are doing well in Florida, which is good to hear.
Kevin
Andrew White
From the foggy memories of Michael Hahn:
My 1st strong memories of Shawn were in our Junior year. We had two classes together; Trigonometry 2/Calculus and English.
Shawn and I sat next to each other in our morning English class with "Too Hot to Handle" Miss Frandle, and we soon became fast friends. The Van Halen music video "Hot for Teacher' had not been created yet, but in our young minds, it seemed like a tamed down version of what we were thinking while in her class. After all, as Juniors
We were mostly interested in 3 things: Cars, Girls, and Rock & Roll.
Shawn was a little more sophisticated with the ladies than I was, so he quickly had a girlfriend Mary Lang. Since Mary's best friend was Linda Klang, we soon were double dating. Shawn had it all going on starting with his 68/69 Camero SS. The car was beautiful. Red with white rally stripes. He had one of those small custom steering wheels. It was just cool.
Shawn had style, and I tried to imitate it. Leather jacket, the coolest jeans. We had a blast dragging the avenue with all the gang cranking our music on the latest 8-track's. We were always playing tennis, stopping at 7-11 for Big Gulps, and just hanging out with all the buddies.
Since Shawn was in French class, he convinced me that this trip the French class was taking to Europe would be something I could go on. I wasn't in French class but if my family could come up with the money, I could go. So I went. It was the trip of a lifetime. 3 weeks in the summer of our Junior year we explored England, France, Italy, Greece. It was so interesting as we hung out with about as many kids from Roanoke, Virginia as there were from Yakima, Wa. It was a true cultural experience.
Eventually we all graduated and went off to college. While Tom Williams, Kevin VanNortwick, and I all joined the fraternity SIGMA PHI EPSILON at the University of Washington, Shawn stayed in Yakima. Eventually he would reunite with us when we rented a 4.5 room house near Northgate in Seattle. There would be 5 of us, and Shawn was cool with taking the smallest crackerjack of a room. Needless to say, there was always something going with the 5 of us.
A few years later, Shawn was married, living on Mercer Island. I would visit the couple quite often. Shawn was always the sweetest person once he got to know you. I would show up at their house at 11:00 pm as that was about when he got off work from UPS. We would play cards, watch Star Trek,listen to music, just living the dream.
I saw Shawn for the last time at our 20th Class reunion. I will really miss him. It's good to remember those times, I need to do it more.
RIP Shawn
Mike