Verona (“Nonie”) Grace Shaw, Class of 1934, was a Biology major from Pittsfield, MA. An active student and athlete, she was a member of the Class Swimming Team and Varsity Swimming Team; vice-president, German Club; and vice-president, Biology Club, of which she was a founding member. During her senior year, she and fellow Biology major, Gertrude Belcher ’34, did advanced research in clinical pathology, studying the entire sophomore class via hemoglobin and urinalysis testing (see “Skidmore News,” October 11, 1933, p.5).
Her life after Skidmore proved to be just as physically active and intellectually engaging. Nonie worked as a medical technologist for over 20 years in Tucson, Arizona, where she moved in the 1940s with her husband, Pete McKibbin, to help ameliorate his deteriorating health. It was here that Nonie discovered scuba diving, becoming an expert and often driving across the Sonoran Desert to the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez) for dives. In the 1950s, she helped found the Desert Dolphins Scuba Diving Club in Tucson, which is still active today. According to her obituaries, she “became an authority in oceanography, especially algae and fish in the Gulf of California,” and co-authored a book, Gulf of California Fishwatcher’s Guide, in 1976 with Donald A. Thomson, a marine scientist in the Zoology department of the University of Arizona whom she befriended. “She was an intrinsic part of the Sea of Cortez which she championed for over 40 years. She knew its waters and shores intimately and instilled a respect for its ecology in all who had contact with her . . . She organized fish counts in the bay from her cabin in Cholla Bay and learned to sail on a board long before it was popular . . . She spent many weekends with her family at Cholla Bay . . . This was the base of operations for many activities including sailing, diving, tide pooling and the fish counts.” Her second book, The Sea in the Desert: Explorer’s Guide to the Gulf of California Seaside, was published posthumously in 1989.
