Charles L. Shrewsbury Jr.

Charles L. Shrewsbury Jr., a longtime Kansas City area resident who mentored and positively impacted hundreds of young men through his involvement in the Boy Scouts of America and as a coach, passed peacefully in the morning of February 10, 2025. He was 94. A celebration of life will be held from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on February 28 at Indian Hills Country Club.

Known as Charlie to his friends, he was born in Lafayette, Ind., to Charles L. and Janet Shrewsbury. Charlie was a graduate of Shawnee Mission High School (now Shawnee Mission North), the University of Kansas and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Charlie was also a junior officer in the U.S. Air Force, and he worked for the investment banking firm of Stern Brothers & Co. in downtown Kansas City, Mo., for 31 years.

Charlie earned the Eagle Scout Award, the highest rank achievable in the Boy Scouts, and remained active in the organization throughout his life. He was a leader of Troop 123 in Kansas City, Mo., for several years. He served on the staffs of the H. Roe Bartle Scout Reservation in Osceola, Mo., the Northern Tier National High Adventure Canoe Base in Ely, Minn., and the high adventure Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron, N.M., during his professional career and in retirement. During his college summer breaks, Charlie also served as a counselor at the former YMCA Camp Gravois in Versailles, Mo.

As a coach, Charlie was well known among students who attended Indian Hills Junior High School, later known as Indian Hills Middle School. While his coaching experience included football and baseball, he was foremost a basketball coach from his late 20s until his early 80s. He was a disciple of Walt Shublom, the legendary local coach who led Wyandotte High School in Kansas City, Kan., to 10 state championships. Charlie was proclaimed the John Wooden of kid basketball in Johnson County by his players, and as a disciplinarian, he didn’t hesitate to make them run line drills during practice – some for the sake of fitness but the preponderance for sloppy play, lack of effort and lip, all of which earned a gym-filling howl of “ON THE LINE!” He demanded that his players say, “Thank you, sir!” to referees when handed the ball for an inbounds pass and keep their canvas Converse shoes “wedding gown white” – which they did with chalk taken from school blackboard trays. He also issued blue shoestrings to recognize exceptional effort on and off the court.

Despite describing himself as a “hard ass,” Charle was very much one of the boys. It was not unusual for him to take his players or troop members out for pizza, to movies (Dutch, of course), or other activities. Notably, he led the three-on-three basketball tournament team Yohimbe Trio to elimination by throwing a no-look two-handed backward pass over his head and out of bounds. At a surprise party for him in the late 70s, he recalled that after a golf outing with some friends, his car engine caught fire and that he and the boys ran to the pro-shop and called the fire department. But when they returned to the parking lot, the fire had gone out. So they piled back in and drove off. A mile or so down the road, they passed by a fire truck, sirens screaming, racing toward the blaze. Charlie also claimed that he was one of the few people to have ever seen “Red Eye,” also known as the Ozark Howler, a large bear-like monster with horns and glowing eyes who roamed the Ozark Mountains. Red Eye stood on Bagnell Dam at the Lake of the Ozarks at last light, he recounted. Fortunately, he further noted, he was a safe distance away.

Charlie loved music. He sang in the Men’s Glee Club at the University of Kansas and was particularly fond of Rock ’n’ Roll from the early 1960s through the early 1980s – the Ramones were often blaring from his van’s speakers on Fridays when he picked up players at school for an extra practice at the secret gym. His collection of vinyl records filled a dozen or so crates, and he meticulously cleaned them with Discwasher D4 Record cleaner before placing them on the turntable of his preeminent HI-FI rig – a Phase Linear preamp and Marantz amp powering JBL and Klipschorn speakers. He was a virtuoso canoe paddle player. (Bass guitar, we think.)

Charlie enjoyed life to the fullest, and even in his last few challenging years in assisted living, he made new friends and discovered new interests and activities. He believed in the Great Spirit. His final resting place will be next to his mother, father and sister in West Lafayette, Ind.