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Biff Shaw: Making Community Count

Many residents of Middlesex County know Biff Shaw. After all, Shaw, now an Essex resident, has been honored in his native Middletown as a Hometown Hero, received a Citizen of the Year Award from the Middletown Chamber of Commerce, and has received numerous awards from his alma mater Wesleyan University including a distinguished alumnus award and an honorary doctorate in 2011. Despite the local renown for good works, there is something very basic that many people do not know: his real first name.

It’s not Biff, the name everybody calls him. It is Ralph, the same name as his father. To avoid confusion, his parents decided, right after his birth when mother and child were still in the hospital, to call their infant son Biff. He explains that the nickname came from Biff Jones, a noted athlete, and later football coach, whose career coincided with Biff Shaw’s birth. (Biff was Jones’s nickname as well— is first name was Lawrence.)

“It’s so common for people to call me Biff that most have no idea that it is not my name,” he says.

In fact, for his security clearance papers during his military service, he had to sign as “Ralph also known as Biff.”

Last month Biff was recognized as an Unsung Hero at the Community Foundation of Middlesex County’s (CFMC) Local Leaders, Local Legends awards ceremony. The award is designed to recognize those whose contributions to local organizations are characteristically made behind the scenes.

Biff grew up in Middletown, attending local schools, with exception of a year at prep school. He stayed right in Middletown for college as well.

“I never wanted to go any other place but Wesleyan,” he recalls.

During his high school days, Middletown had two high schools: Woodrow Wilson and Middletown. That gave Biff one of his first opportunities to do charitable fundraising. Middletown High had a particularly good football team that was invited to Florida to play, but had to raise the money. Biff, even though he attended Woodrow Wilson, started a fundraising for the effort. People asked him why he was helping the other high school. His answer was easy.

“I was having fun doing it,” he says.

Having fun, in fact, is one of the things that explains Biff’s lifelong devotion to charitable causes.

“I like doing it. If I wasn’t having fun, I wouldn’t,” he says.

He became deeply involved in the United Way in Middletown before becoming a founding member of CFMC. The community foundation supports a wide variety of local initiatives in health, education, environment, and the arts. Biff recalls talking with other community leaders in Middletown in 1997 about the notion of a community foundation.

“We saw a bunch of other communities had funds,” he recalls, noting the group concluded, “We’ll learn how to do one ourselves.”

Biff’s service to community organizations involved groups that touched every aspect of Middletown community life, including Planning & Zoning Commission, the Task Force on Economic Development, the Wadsworth Mansion Building Committee, and the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce. He served on the board of Middlesex Community College and was president of the Middlesex Community College Foundation, and on several different occasions, served as chairman of the board of Middlesex Hospital.

Since moving to Essex Meadows four years ago, Biff has served as president of the Essex Meadows Foundation, a group formed by residents to award college scholarships to employees and their children.

Out of college, Biff worked for a family manufacturing business in Middletown until the directors of a local bank, on whose board he sat, asked if he would take over the presidency. He served as president first of the City Saving Bank in Middletown and later as president and CEO of Farmers and Mechanics Bank in Middletown.

On the day his retirement from his banking position was announced in the local Middletown newspaper, the president of Middlesex Hospital at the time called to ask if he would like to work for the hospital in community relations. That put off retirement for another 11 years.

Throughout his professional career, Biff always wanted to make sure that he had time away from the pressure of the office.

“When I went on vacation, I didn’t call back to the office every day, I didn’t want to call back to the office every day,” he says. “I feel sorry for the current generation with their phones in their pockets. They cannot get away. It makes me sad for all the fun things they are missing.”

Biff adds that even when he was president of a bank, he urged his employees to have fun.

“I insisted they take time to do other things, not to sit at desk and look at a computer; to volunteer for things. If it was a golf tournament, that was fine with me. They benefit many causes.”

Biff and his wife Jean have known each other since childhood. She also grew up in Middletown and the two sets of parents were good friends, but the children were initially less enamored of each other.

“I’d say ‘Is she going to be there?’” Biff recalls.

They began to correspond in college and married when both were in the military, Jean in the Navy and Biff in the Army, in 1952. They told their parents in October that when they came home on leave in December they would be getting married.

“It wasn’t such a problem because when they saw each other’s invitation lists, the names were 75 percent the same,” Biff recalls.

The couple has two grown children. Jean, who also received an honorary degree from Wesleyan when Biff did, spent her career at Wesleyan, ultimately as director of the Center for the Arts.

Biff and Jean have long loved to travel, for many years doing regular trips overseas, and more recently trips within the United States. Their most recent trip was to Chicago to see residences designed by Frank Lloyd wright followed by what Biff calls “a mini architecture tour of the Midwest.” Contemporary architecture is one of their ongoing interests.

Biff does not have a bucket list of undone adventures, but rather a feeling of enjoyment over what life has brought him.

“It’s been a very satisfying life; full, wonderful,” he says.

After years of working with non-profit groups, Biff has some advice on how to find what every charitable group needs: volunteers.

“I always asked somebody I already knew was active. If you want a volunteer, ask a busy person,” he says.

For more information on the Community Fund of Middlesex Country, visit middlesexcountycf.org.