Former Lenawee County Prosecutor Irving Shaw Jr. dies at 91
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Irving Shaw Jr. served Lenawee County as a prosecuting attorney and legal counsel for 60 years.
His friends and colleagues are remembering him for that work, but also for his love of animals, his kindness and generosity, his many interests and hobbies, and his intelligence and memory.
Shaw died Dec. 23 at the age of 91 from complications of congestive heart failure.
He started working as chief assistant prosecutor in 1961, about a year after earning his law degree at the University of Toledo, and he didn’t completely stop working for the county until the pandemic forced the county to make some budget cuts in 2020, and his position in the prosecutor’s office as counsel to the board of commissioners was eliminated.
“He loved his work. He loved his colleagues. He was very, completely enmeshed in that community,” his daughter, Alix Shaw, said.
“He held the welfare of the citizenry in utmost esteem. That was first and foremost in his mind,” retired Lenawee County sheriff’s detective Robert Wolverton said. “… The Bill of Rights was sacred to him.”
Shaw’s time at the prosecutor’s office saw the state establish the district court system to replace municipal courts and the construction of the Rex B Martin Judicial Building to allow for the expansion of the county courts. District court proceedings used to take place in the former Miller Ice Cream Shop at the corner of Maple Avenue and Main Street where part of the judicial building parking lot is now. He was appointed county prosecutor in 1991 after Nathan Fairchild retired, and voters kept him in office until he retired in 2008.
“They were doing trials in fire halls. He used to talk about the ice cream shop. It was so cool to hear his stories,” Burke Castleberry, Lenawee County’s current prosecuting attorney, said. “He was just an amazing person.”
Some of his assistant prosecutors — Margaret M.S. Noe, Jonathan L. Poer, Laura J. Schaedler — became judges.
“He was an excellent prosecutor, a great mentor,” Poer said. “Just a great man, as far as I’m concerned.”
His colleagues remarked on his ability to recall facts about cases, history — anything, really.
“He had multiple interests, whether it was engineering type of things, smithing, mechanics … He was conversant in almost all kinds of topics,” Poer said.
“Irv was a true renaissance man. He was curious about everything. His intellect was hard to appreciate,” Wolverton said. “He also had a set of moral values that have become increasingly rare today. He believed in honesty. He believed in the true American values as traditionally espoused and refused to lower his standards in those regards.”
Shaw could have pursued a career as a machinist, gunsmith, heavy equipment operator or mechanic, Wolverton said.
“These are jobs that require skill, both manually and intellectually,” he said. “He was capable. … In my world, that’s high praise.”
Serving the people
Shaw just happened to pursue a legal career.
“He was very capable of understanding the facts of a case and presenting them very well. He was great at cross-examination. He was just a great trial attorney,” Poer said.
“If you had a problem and you had a case, you can talk to Irv and he would undoubtedly have a solution to the problem,” Frank Riley, Shaw’s long-time chief assistant prosecutor, said. “… Irv had literally seen it all and done it all and he was more than willing to share it with anybody that asked.”
Castleberry said he could ask Shaw about any issue the county might have faced. It’s wasn’t just a matter of remembering past situations. He said Shaw could relate his experience to new circumstances.
“He’d been there so long, and he’d handled every issue for the county, and then you add that to his memory, which was amazing. He was an encyclopedia,” Castleberry said. “He was Google for me.”
Barb Kirkendall was the office manager at the prosecutor’s office during Shaw’s tenure.
“You could mention a case to him, and I wouldn’t remember the names, and he would remember the names,” she said. “I would remember the circumstances and he would remember the names.”
His steel-trap memory was noticed even before he became an attorney, Alix Shaw said. When he served in the Army, he was assigned to Fort Meade in Maryland, near Washington, D.C. The maps the military had of the D.C. area weren’t very good, so he studied the free road maps he picked up at gas stations and he became known for his good sense of direction. She said he ended up being assigned to drive VIPs to and from the airport or other places because other drivers couldn’t navigate D.C.’s web of streets.
“He got a reputation as the guy who never got lost,” she said.
Wolverton said he enjoyed working on cases with Shaw, ask they each aimed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of each case so that they could anticipate any argument the defense might put forward. He recalled working with Shaw to cross-check facts and statutory and case law and research witnesses so that they would be thoroughly prepared.
Shaw held the criminal justice system to a high standard, Wolverton said, which could irritate some officers when he asked for certain things.
“It was necessary to complete the process and ensure that justice is just that — just,” he said.
Shaw made himself available to help investigators while they were working a case. Wolverton said colleagues in other counties were surprised that he would call Shaw at any time to ask questions.
“We had a criminal justice system that worked well, was just and was fair,” he said.
“We were always aware that you don’t cut corners, be completely honest, be completely upright because the office’s reputation was very important to him, that reputation being that we were straight-shooters and did the right thing,” Riley said.
“His personal integrity was great,” Wolverton said. “When you operate on the level that he did, your word had better be your bond.”
If asked a difficult question, he would have difficult answers, retired sheriff’s detective LuAnn Bearden said.
“He always had the biggest eyes and kind of smile,” she said. “He would explain everything thoroughly. Having a law degree — and law enforcement officers don’t have that law degree — he always made sure exactly how to handle things.”
Shaw seemed to always get the difficult cases, she said.
“He was so smart,” she said.
Retired Sheriff Jack Welsh, who worked for the sheriff’s office in many capacities before being elected sheriff, said he could never recall ever having a cross word with Shaw.
“I could always talk with Irv, even if I didn’t agree with him,” Welsh said.
“He always had the answers,” Bearden said.
He had some high-profile convictions. Kirkendall recalled a case where a man who was wanted in several states for violent crimes, including murder, in other states, was convicted in Lenawee County of kidnapping and raping a woman. Riley recalled a case where an undercover police officer was kidnapped while investigating drug dealing. He said Shaw was able to keep the investigators and prosecutors’ emotions calm to ensure a successful prosecution.
Thinking of others
Beyond trying cases, Shaw was kind and generous. Schaedler recalled that a group from the prosecutor’s office would often meet at Mr. Ed’s, the long-time downtown Adrian restaurant where Sauce is now. She noticed at their Christmas dinners there that Shaw, Dan Bruggeman, Fairchild and, later, Riley, would make sure their regular waitress and the cook received large holiday tips.
“It wasn’t anything he crowed about,” she said.
He would regularly do things for people without being asked if he thought they needed something, Schaedler said.
Kirkendall said when she needed time to take to care of her mother, he told her do what she needed to do.
He also had a soft spot for animals. He always had dogs and cats, Alix Shaw said. Schaedler said, as far as she could remember, all of his dogs were rescues. She recalled how he came to take in Freddy, a dog who lived near Tecumseh.
“My recollection is people … were not treating Freddy well, so he went and got Freddy and took real good care of Freddy,” she said.
Alix Shaw said her father rarely talked about work at home, but she recalled an animal cruelty case in the early 1980s where the defendant had harmed several animals, including drowning a bag full of kittens in a lake. The jury found the man guilty.
“He came home and he looked so satisfied,” she said. “I think that was one of his proudest cases.”
Wide-ranging interests
Shaw liked to keep busy. Alix Shaw said he would come home from his day job, change clothes and go work on a project in his workshop. Then they would have dinner, and he would go to work on restoring a gun. Even after he retired as prosecutor, he stayed on the prosecutor’s office payroll until 2020 as a consultant.
“He’s a guy who always wanted to be working and doing something. He was not somebody who was like, ‘I’m going to retire to Florida and sit on the beach now,’” she said.
Shaw also was interested in how anything worked, whether it was an antique locomotive or a firearm, Wolverton said. Poer recalled he and Shaw shared an interest in history.
Shaw was born Aug. 5, 1930, in Tecumseh to Irving Shaw Sr. and Olive Mackey Shaw. He graduated from Tecumseh High School and was the first in his family to attend college. He received an English degree from Hillsdale College in 1953. After serving in the Army, he was accepted into Columbia University’s law school, but did not attend due to financial constraints, his obituary said. He later graduated from the U-T law school and he and his wife, Lois, moved back to Lenawee County to start his law career and their family.
Shaw is survived by his children, John W. Shaw and Alix Anne Shaw; by his daughter-in-law, Linda Kramer; his grandson, Jia-Ji Shaw; by his former wife, Lois Lane; and by Joan Baumgart, his partner of many years.
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