When Dick Shanahan closed the door on his corporate career almost three decades ago, he opened dozens of others. He launched into a new and unusually active public service and professional career that shows no signs of stopping. At age 88, he has begun his term as 2016 president of the Marco Island Area Association of Realtors, a position he also held in 1997, 2000 and 2004. “Maybe I’ll slow down next year,” he said with a smile. Shanahan and his first wife, Catherine, a native Floridian, moved to then-sleepy Marco Island in 1987 from Chicago, where he was vice president in charge of marketing.
After years of executive pressures and a few corporate moves, he was ready to escape the cold and relax on the golf course, or perhaps dabble in growing oranges. “Before, I only had time for work and family,” he said, adding that he has five daughters. “It took all of my energy and focus.” Within a few months, however, he was bored. So in 1988 he ran for a Collier County Commission seat — the first time he ever had pursued a public office.
Using the salesmanship skills he’d honed over a lifetime, he won, defeating a three-term incumbent. Over the next four years, he helped craft the county’s land development and wound up as chairman of both the Southwest Regional Planning Council and the Metropolitan Planning Organization. His goal, he said, was “to balance environmental concerns with private property rights.” It wasn’t easy in a county where landowners were accustomed to doing whatever they wanted with their property, he recalled. Emotions ran high as the code provisions were discussed in public meetings.
“When we went in to vote, the room became so jammed with people that we needed an armed guard to take us in,” he said. And yet when the code was finalized, Shanahan was convinced it was “done right.” But not enough voters agreed for Shanahan to win his next election — and because district lines had been redrawn during his incumbency, he resolved to give up politics. Instead, he opted to participate in the county’s rapid building boom another way. In 1993 he went back to school to get his real estate license.
He hadn’t been a student since 1951, when he had graduated from Quincy University in Illinois. But Shanahan already was well-prepared for new challenges, since he’d been facing them all of his life. The son of a streetcar motorman and a stay-at-home mother, Shanahan was the middle child in a family of five children. “It wasn’t easy for us,” he said. “Chicago was a rough and big city. You had to be aggressive and on your game all the time.”
To help out his family, Shanahan shoveled snowy sidewalks, did yardwork and ran lemonade stands as a child. When he got older, he worked as a stevedore unloading freight trains. The hard physical labor convinced him he’d prefer a job that used more intellectual skills. Remembering his mother’s advice to “educate yourself to the best of your ability with the resources you have,” Shanahan went to college on a football scholarship and studied marketing.
After he graduated he found an entry-level job with Maremont, answering phones and correspondence, then moved up the ranks until he eventually wound up heading the company’s marketing operations. These days Shanahan uses the sales and executive skills he’d honed in his corporate life as a real estate agent associated with Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Florida Realty in its Marco Island office.
But he also keeps up an active civic life. He is serving or has served on the boards of 19 local organizations, from the American Cancer Society to United Way, and has served as president of a number of them. Last year he was president of the Marco Island Chamber of Commerce.
He and his wife, Debra, 59, whom he married after his first wife died, also are involved in numerous community activities.
He met Debra when he was president of the Marco Police Foundation; she was the foundation’s executive director. Both have been showered with honors for their community service. Shanahan was named Naples Daily News Citizen of the Year in 2001, Rotarian of the Year in 2000 and Realtor of the Year in 1999 and 2009. He was given the Chamber of Commerce Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. His wife was named Citizen of the Year in 2014 and Marco Eagle Volunteer of the Year in 2010.
Together they have chaired several golf tournaments and balls that have raised thousands of dollars for local charities. As he approaches his 90s, Shanahan sees no reason to disengage from the professional and civic activities that have added so much to his enjoyment of life ever since he thought he had retired to Marco Island. And the secret to his happiness is simple, he said. “When people asked me to do something, I said yes,” he explained. “And I have been saying yes ever since.’ ”
Write to june.fletcher@naples news.com or call 239-263-4775.
