Shirley Calkins Ellis’ legacy is in community service
Calkins Ellis
Calkins archives
Calkins archives Shirley Calkins Ellis starts up the press at the new Burlington County Times building in Willingboro, New Jersey.
Calkins archives
Calkins archives Shirley Calkins Ellis with her husband Marvin E. Ellis
Doing what you can for others — and your community — were two principles Shirley Calkins Ellis learned from her father.
It was a lesson well taught.
As a co-owner and vice president of Calkins Media, parent company of the Bucks County Courier Times in Tullytown and The Intelligencer in Doylestown Borough, Shirley Ellis kept the interests of the community that supported her family’s journalistic endeavors in the forefront of everything she did.
“We try to run our companies for the betterment of the community,” was among her favorite quotes.
Shirley Ellis died of natural causes Saturday at age 82.
A 49-year resident of Riverton, New Jersey, she was born into the news business. The firstborn child of Stanley W. Calkins, who founded the company in 1937, and Helen Bargeron Calkins, she and her siblings, the late Carolyn Smith, Sandra Hardy and Stanley W. Calkins Jr., known as “Bill,” inherited the business when their father died in 1973. The sisters bought out Bill Calkins in 1984.
Aside from the Bucks County Courier Times and The Intelligencer, Calkins Media owns the Burlington County Times in Willingboro, New Jersey, the Beaver County Times in Beaver, the Herald-Standard in Uniontown, the South Dade News Leader in Homestead, Florida, WAAY-TV, ABC 31 in Huntsville, Alabama, WTXL-TV, ABC 27 in Tallahassee, Florida, WWSB-TV, ABC 7 in Sarasota, Florida, and ShaleReporter.com
According to her son, Calkins Media director and vice president Stanley M. Ellis, his mother, while helping the organization evolve and grow into the 21st century, “she still liked the daily newspaper. She liked to hold that piece of paper in her hands.”
And as Calkins grew from a newspaper company to a digital company, she grew as well. “She knew that was what the community and market wanted,” Ellis said. “For her, the platform was secondary to good, quality journalism.”
Mark G. Contreras, chief executive officer of Calkins Media, remembered her fondly. “Shirley’s influence on the company was important and enduring,” Contreras said. “She — along with her sisters Carolyn Smith and Sandra Hardy — created an environment of tireless commitment to serving the communities where we operate and a passion for innovation over many decades.
“The entire company will mourn her passing and remember the consistently ethical values the Calkins family has instilled throughout. We are fortunate that her enduring commitment to high-quality journalism and continued devotion to community service will continue to be actively and energetically represented by the Ellis family moving forward.”
Charles Smith, a director of Calkins Media and Shirley Ellis’ nephew, praised her business acumen. “She wasn’t a lawyer but she had a great legal mind and an incredible ability to call upon that when it mattered,” he said. “Quick-thinking and knowledgeable, in a boardroom she was able to influence things on that knowledge base … If she had been born 20 years later, she would have been a lawyer.”
Shirley Ellis was born in Uniontown, where she lived until leaving for college. In a 2012 interview on the occasion of Calkins Media’s 75th anniversary, she recalled running up the stairs at the building that housed the Uniontown paper to visit her father in his office. Those times were happy and memorable for her; she would also visit a nearby dime store to purchase paper dolls with a dime her father gave her.
But the visits were educational as well: “(My father) would show me a lot. I learned a tremendous amount about newspapers,” she said. She also learned another side of the business from her father, who developed an accounting system for newspapers.
“One of the principles (my father taught me) was do what you can for others… That always stuck with me and has been a part of what I do,” she said.
She attended Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. But, her son said, she didn’t like it there, and transferred to Pennsylvania State University in State College, from where she graduated with a history degree. While she would have rather studied journalism, that would have meant an additional two years of at school — and she had other plans.
On a Thanksgiving Day when she was 18, Shirley Calkins met the man who would become her husband and partner in the journalism business. Marvin E. Ellis also was 18, a native of Savannah, Georgia, who was an ROTC student at Georgia Tech. “She came home and said she was in love and found the man she was going to marry,” said Stanley Ellis.
And marry they did, in 1956. Aside from Stanley, the union produced sons Bradley and Wesley. The family moved around the country for a few years as Marvin Ellis fulfilled his military service, eventually settling in Riverton in November 1967.
Marvin Ellis, who was vice president of development for Calkins Newspapers and former publisher of the BCT, died in 1982 at age 48.
In his memory, his wife started a scholarship named for him at then-Burlington County College. Over the years, that scholarship merged with another one in the memory of S.W. Calkins. Today, it is known as the Marvin E. Ellis/S.W. Calkins Memorial Scholarship at Rowan College at Burlington County.
“My mother was a firm believer in quality education at all levels,” said Stanley Ellis. As such, she was a staunch supporter of the BCT’s Teen Excellence program, which each June honors and provides scholarships to outstanding high school students in Burlington County.
“She liked to help young people get a chance at higher education,” Ellis said.
The Give a Christmas campaign, which helps to provide a holiday for families in need, was always very important to her as well, her son said.
“It was important for the newspaper and the family to give back. When my father passed, she took it as a personal mission that (Give a Christmas) continued.
“For many years, she attended the planning meetings to make sure that everything was taken care of to her satisfaction,” he said.
But Shirley Ellis’ philanthropy didn’t end there. In 2004, saying that she wanted to give back to the community that gave so much to her and her family, she established the Ellis Family Charitable Foundation. She provided the seed money and helped put a board in place.
The charity awarded its first grants in 2005; to date, said Ellis, it has given about $750,000 to arts, community and civic groups that serve the people of Burlington County. “She wanted to help Burlington County be as good as it could be,” said Ellis, adding that the area’s “four-legged citizens” — the residents at Woodford Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge in Medford — also benefited from the foundation.
In her private life, Shirley Ellis valued family above everything. She loved to travel and made sure that her children and grandchildren caught the travel bug as well. Stanley Ellis remembers every summer growing up flying somewhere in the U.S. with his parents, and then touring the area by car. “It was important to her for her children to understand how beautiful the country we live in is,” he said.
The garden at her home was her pride and joy. “My early childhood memories are of Mom on her hands and knees weeding and planting flowers,” Ellis said. In later years, she had help tending the garden, but still made sure “the flowers were perfectly placed, the grass was mowed and the shrubs trimmed,” he said.
Penn State football was a fall favorite, as were the Eagles and Sixers, Smith said. “She had staunch opinions about coaches and players and could argue effectively for her position.”
Summers at the shore were her passion. “Her favorite pastime was sitting on the back porch and looking at the water and getting a little sun,” said Ellis. Charles Smith called his aunt a “confident hostess. She loved nothing more than to have her family and friends be together enjoying themselves at the shore.
When she wasn’t entertaining, his mother, who he said “had a keen eye for quality,” liked to shop at the stores and boutiques in Cape May and Stone Harbor, said Ellis.
She is survived by her sons, Stanley M. Ellis, of Riverton, and his wife Susan; Bradley Ellis, of Purcellville, Virginia, and his wife Suzanne; Wesley, of Cherry Hill, New Jersey; grandchildren Stephen Ellis, and his wife Heather; Ryan Ellis; Curran Ellis; Samantha Ellis; Kiersten Ellis; and Daniel Ellis; great-grandson Sean Ellis; sister Sandra C. Hardy, of Lower Makefield; and brother S.W. “Bill” Calkins Jr., of Upper Makefield.
Funeral arrangements are pending. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations to the Ellis Family Charitable Foundation, dedicated to supporting not-for-profit organizations in Burlington County; to the Marvin E. Ellis/S.W.Calkins Memorial Scholarship at Rowan College at Burlington County or the S.W. Calkins Scholarship at Penn State.