Sharon K Ronan

Born in Dayton, OH in 1941 as the only child of Vincent and Justine Griffy (née Bennett), Sharon’s father Vincent was a veteran of World War II, who received accolades from the city of Antwerp, Belgium for his service during the D-Day landings of 1944-45. He carried his wartime training as an engineer into lifetime employment as a power plant manager at the Inland facility of the General Motors Corporation in Dayton, and Sharon's mother, Justine, was a homemaker who supported her upbringing in nearby Trotwood, Ohio.

In 1961, Sharon married her high school sweetheart, John K. Shank, who was voted with her the Best Couple by the Trotwood Madison High School class of 1958. Moving to join him at Oberlin College, OH after she had finished an associate's degree in Business Administration at Miami Jacobs College, she began her half-century long career as a professional administrator by working as a secretary at the Oberlin College Admissions Office.

The couple moved to Pittsburgh after John's graduation from Oberlin in 1962 so that he could complete an M.B.A degree at the University of Pittsburgh. After returning to Dayton, where John began work as a C.P.A, Sharon gave birth to her first son, John Bennett Shank, known from birth as J.B., on 27 June 1964. Supporting John as he moved the family to Columbus, OH so that he could complete a Doctoral Degree in Accounting at The Ohio State University, she gave birth to two more boys: Douglas Kincaid Shank born in Dayton on 6 May 1966 and Michael Vincent Shank born in Columbus on 17 January 1969.

In the summer of 1969 with his Ph.D. degree in hand, John moved the family to Lexington, MA so that he could begin his academic career at the Harvard University Business School. A fulltime homemaker, who raised three boys and four dogs – two labs named Cinnamon and Sheba and two standard poodles named Benji and B.T. (which stood for “Black Thing;” she he let her boys pick the last name) – in a neighborhood full of other families with young kids, Sharon was a devoted mother and a friendly neighbor, as well as a car pool organizer, a team snack provider, a successful Cub Scout Den Mother, and a regular volunteer at the local public schools. She was also an active member of the local chapter of the League of Women's voters, and her sons remember learning a little bit about how our country works through the project she organized where we sent a letter to the Secretary of State of all fifty of the United States of America asking for information about each state. The response was amazing, at least in the eyes of her pre-teen boys.

In 1976, John left his position at Harvard and returned to The Ohio State University, moving the family into a home in Upper Arlington. Sharon returned to her administrative work, establishing herself as a senior administrator at the Battelle Memorial Institute. Her sons remember well when she brought home one of the exterior heat tiles from the first NASA Space Shuttle mission, which had been developed at Battelle, and the ease with which she used the exotic new technology of the day called "computer word processing" to produce elegant versions of our student writing assignments that always impressed our teachers.

The years around 1980 were a difficult period for the family as John and Sharon's marriage dissolved and the kids began to move away from home for school. Despite the distance separating us, we never lost track of our mother and never stopped feeling her generous, non-judgmental, and ever persistent love for every one of us. In these years, in fact, she pioneered one of her trademark acts of love – the holiday gift box she sent by parcel post on every single birthday and Christmas without fail. J.B. remembers in particular the case of White Castle hamburgers packed in dry ice that she sent to him at college in Rhode Island. Her grandkids came to call her "Bada," for reasons that no one remembers, and for them the arrival of their annual "Bada box” was always a treat and an event to look forward to.

In the late 80s, Sharon met her new love and partner Raymond Ronan, who made her laugh again in the way that was always her characteristic personality trait. Sharon and Ray had a very happy, if brief, time together, living for a short period as newlyweds in Upper Arlington before he retired and moved them up to his vacation cabin in Tawas Bay, MI. Together with her dog Travis, Sharon continued her administrative work with the Tawas Bay Chamber of Commerce, adding expertise as an organizer of Polar Bear Plunges, Walleye Derbies, and Fall Harvest Festivals to her resume. Ray was diagnosed with cancer soon after their arrival in Michigan, and after his death in 1990, she collected all of their things, including his vast collection of duck decoys, many of which Ray carved himself, and moved back to Columbus where she quickly obtained a senior administrative position at the Asea, Brown, Boveri Company, a very successful multi-national technology company known to most people as ABB. She also bought her own house in Upper Arlington, where she lived independently and happily for over two decades, filling her Bada boxes during these years with all manner of ABB swag from polo shirts and chamois pullovers to beer can cozies, laser pointers, and chip bag clips to name only some of the more memorable offerings.

During the difficult years around 1980, Sharon succumbed to alcoholism, an illness she shared with Ray. But as a successful practitioner of the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-Step Program, Ray was sober when he met Sharon, and with his love and support she also achieved sobriety during their years in Michigan. She was very proud of her sobriety, sharing with her sons her achievement of the A.A. milestones of five, ten and fifteen years of sobriety when she received the medallions marking her achievement.

Her second period in Upper Arlington, which began after her move back home from Michigan, were some of the best years of her life, and one of her greatest accomplishments was the four summer family reunion vacations that she organized on Martha's Vineyard Island in Massachusetts between 2009 and 2012. These gatherings allowed her five grandchildren – Ian McPhail Shank (born 1993), Bryn McPhail Shank (born 1996), Olivia Buschar Shank (born 1999), Tatum Buschar Shank (born 2001), and Henry Shank (born 2007) – to become close family relatives despite living hundreds of miles apart. The gatherings also helped to restore family connections among her sons and their wives and families. To these regular summer gatherings were also added trips to Saint Paul, Minnesota, where J.B. and his wife Alison (married in 1988) have lived since 2000, and Martha's Vineyard Island, where Buck and his wife Nichole (married officially on December 31, 1999 in Las Vegas) have lived since the 1990s. The decades on either side of 2000 also included much time spent with her two granddaughters, Tatum and Olivia, who lived until very recently in Columbus with their father Doug.

In September 2009, Sharon retired from ABB at the age of 68, and during these later years she also experienced the death of her two beloved dogs, Travis and Max, and with it the end of daily dog walking, which contributed to the inevitable decline of her body in the ensuing years. Her seventies soon became a time of reckoning given her fierce independence and the difficulty of living alone in a maintenance-needy house while her mobility declined rapidly. As the possibility of travel to visit family waned as well, and as friends began to shrink in number and her life became ever more lonely as a result, she was forced to confront the reality that living alone in her house was no longer a viable option.

The pandemic sealed the case for her, but fortunately she found in First Community Village a place that she truly loved, and a new home where she could experience a renaissance of healthy living during the final years of her life. When we helped her to move into her apartment in the Burkhart wing of FCV in the fall of 2020 at the age of 79, her sons told her that her 80s may in fact become better years for her than her seventies had been. For at least five of them – she died at 84 – that was absolutely the case.

She described living in Burkhart as akin to going back to high school except everybody is now in wheel chairs, and she loved all the new friends she made and the gossipy dinners together full of storytelling and complaints about the food. She was sincerely proud when her fellow residents and friends elected her to be the "Mayor" of Burkhart who represented them at the monthly FCV Community meetings, and she also embraced the Ambassador title by serving as the current resident who helped newcomers learn the ins and outs, including the dirt, of life at FCV. She also took to the "cruise ship living" of FCV as we liked to call it like a fish to water. Her life-long love of Euchre was rekindled through weekly games with residents, and she loved the bingo sessions, the entertainers who visited, the group reading of plays, and the collective crossword puzzle solving to mention only four of the many diversions FCV offered. She also loved sitting with her friends in the gardens during warm weather, and the opportunities for daily visiting offered by the facility. She also and especially loved the staff who became her friends and caregivers at the same time, turning FCV into a true village supporting happy and healthy living.

A Buckeye through and through and to the bottom of her heart, and a sports fan of the first order, she also loved the collective game watching and post-game analysis that FCV provided. For the last four Thanksgivings of her life, J.B. and his family travelled to Columbus to spend the holiday with her, a visit that always included the FCV “tailgate BBQ” and jumbotron showing of the Ohio State-Michigan football game in the Chelsea dining room. We were sad with her that she never saw Ryan Day defeat that team up north, but that she did see the recent Buckeye national championship victory over Notre Dame before she died is evidence for us that Brutus had her back as she always had his.

A gathering to remember Sharon will be held in the Burkhart Living Room of First Community Village, 1802 Riverside Drive, Columbus, OH 43212, on Thursday March 27 from 2:30-4:30 pm. Questions concerning this event can be addressed to Bobby Pennell at FCV <BPennell@nationalchurchresidences.org>. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you consider a donation on Sharon's behalf to the Diabetes Research Institute Foundation <https://diabetesresearch.org/about-dri-foundation/>. Please visit www.schoedinger.com to share memories and condolences. Funeral arrangements entrusted to SCHOEDINGER NORTHWEST.