Carol E. Shanesy

Carol was born to Dorothy Eberhart Shanesy and Harold Dennis Shanesy and raised in Evanston, Illinois. Her maternal grandfather, A. O. Eberhart, was the 17th Governor of Minnesota. She was very close to her parents and credited them with encouraging her to go to college and pursue a career at a time when that was less common for women. She graduated from Denison University with a degree in Mathematics in 1958 and received a Master’s Degree in Mathematics from Northwestern University in 1959. She moved East and started work at IBM Research in 1959. In an interview for the Engineering and Technology History Wiki, Carol described the early days of punch cards, including drives up to Poughkeepsie to run the cards through the machine, and “patching bugs,” which meant using more punch cards or chads to fix card errors. From 1969 to 1972, Carol worked for the Rand Corporation, concentrating on projects for the New York City Fire Department. She returned to IBM as a Senior Systems Engineer and early specialist in CICS (important for customer mainframe interaction). Eventually, the New York City Police Department became the main focus of her work at IBM. Throughout her career, Carol was interested in using her work for civic benefit. Carol was integral to a project that computerized fingerprints to enable better search and matching within the NYPD's master fingerprint database; she also worked on a large programming project that automated calls from New York City fire boxes. She was honored with a Civil Commendation from the NYPD in 1979 for the fingerprint project and was also the recipient of many awards and accolades at IBM before her retirement in 2002.

Carol moved to Croton in 1994 and quickly became involved in Croton activities, including creation of the Jane E. Lytle Memorial Croton Arboretum and establishment of the Croton Housing Network. She was Treasurer of many organizations, including Croton Democrats. In addition, for many years, Carol was a driving force behind Croton’s successful blood drives. These activities and many more brought her recognition and devoted friends and admirers.

Carol had several beloved cousins and close, lifelong friends from college and her years at IBM, some spread across the country and others living nearby in a tight-knit and supportive community. She and her friends loved to travel and visited many parts of the world. Memorable trips included a freezing cold winter visit to see the Northern Lights in Iceland and a vacation in Turkey, where they took a balloon ride over Cappadocia. She was an extraordinary crossword player and completed the Sunday New York Times Crossword in short order every week. In addition to devoting herself to her family and friends, Carol generously supported many charities and causes, especially Berea College in Kentucky, which drew her because it was a tuition-free school with the mission of educating young people in southern Appalachia who could not otherwise afford to go to college.

Carol will be dearly missed by her family and friends and by her community. She is survived by cousins John Lampe, Ruth Ann Eberhart, Thomas Eberhart, and John Eberhart. A memorial service will be held at 2 PM on Saturday, March 15, at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Croton.

Instead of flowers, contributions in her memory may be made to Berea College, the Croton Housing Network, or the Croton Arboretum.