Hello Ocala! Meet your neighbor: Phyllis Shaw

Phyllis Shaw poses for a photo on the archery range at On Top of the World in Ocala on Thursday, August 10, 2023. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2023.

“Don’t say I can’t!” That is Phyllis Shaw’s motto. 

“Too many 55+ people say they are too old, too tired, not strong, or too ‘whatever.’ I’d like to see more women say, ‘I can’t do it now, but I’ll try,’ and give it a shot,” Shaw said.

She is talking mainly about the On Top of the World (OTOW) archery program. 

“We are blessed to have an archery club and archery range here. There are not a lot of senior housing communities that have archery ranges,” Shaw said, adding that archery mentors and accomplished archers help those who are interested in the sport. She said archery is an adaptive sport.

“And it is physically good for you,” she said. “People with physical disabilities can achieve goals using archery.”  

And she should know. Shaw was diagnosed with polio when she was 8 months old. She said her parents were told they should put her into an institution because she would never progress and never walk or be “functional.” 

Little did they know their child would become the National Field Archery Association (NFAA) state champion in indoor archery. She then received a silver medal in the entire NFAA Southeast region, which encompasses Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee. All this after only two years of beginning in the sport. These accomplishments were achieved in March of this year.

Shaw, who was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and, after graduating high school, went to Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky, where she earned a degree in early childhood education. She also holds a master’s degree in secondary English (British literature) from the University of New Orleans. Her siblings include two brothers and a half-brother and half-sister. Her two brothers remain in New Orleans; the stepsiblings are deceased.

Shaw met her husband, Philip Shaw, at the end of her first year in college. 

“He was on the wrestling team, and I thought he was pure perfection,” she shared. 

They became good friends. She took a trip to go to the Kentucky Derby and didn’t tell him she was going. He thought she had moved away without telling him. When she returned after the trip, he proposed to her. On June 9, 2024, they will have been married for 46 years.

After she graduated from Eastern Kentucky University, the couple moved to New Orleans, where she taught at a school for boys with behavioral and criminal issues. 

“They were ‘severe juvenile offenders,’” she explained. 

While teaching at the school, she became pregnant with their first child and, at one point, a student threatened her and her unborn baby. She asked to be transferred to a different position and when she was told that was not possible, she left the school. 

After the birth of their first daughter, the couple had two more children. Phyllis worked in the Head Start Program in New Orleans. Philip was employed with Ford Motor Company in finance, from which he is now retired.

The couple’s first daughter is married and she and her husband work in the Middle East. Their son works for Family Health and Services in Kentucky. Their second daughter is a speech pathologist in Montana. Both younger children have muscular dystrophy, Shaw shared, and are both active. They have had the disease all of their lives but were asymptomatic until they were 3 or 4 years old. Neither of them married or have children.

Speaking of her own disability, Shaw said it wasn’t until she was 1 year old that the polio vaccine was approved for babies 8 months old, so she missed being able to have the vaccine by four months. 

“But it was a blessing,” she said. “Since I have always been like this, it wasn’t a ‘loss’ for me. To me, I have always been normal. If I had been 20 years old and then couldn’t run, that would have been a loss.”

Shaw has had 30 orthopedic surgeries. 

“I had lots of surgeries growing up. I lived in the hospital and was home only on weekends for most of my life. That was a blessing, too,” she said. “If I had been at home, I wouldn’t have had the continuous care that I had at the hospitals.” 

When still a very young child, she began pulling herself up on furniture to stand and used an old television stand with wheels as a walker. Then she was given leg braces like Forrest Gump, she related. 

“’Amazing Grace’ is my favorite hymn, and when I get to heaven, I will be like Forrest Gump and the braces will fly off my legs. Only when that happens, I want to wear red high heels!” Shaw exclaimed.

Phyllis Shaw on Thursday, August 10, 2023. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2023.

“Now, I am quite active in archery class at OTOW. It takes a lot of time. I am on the board and use a walker. I can walk on my own, but have an awkward gait,” she explains. “I have never been able to compete in any sport before archery. You find a way to accomplish what you want to accomplish through the pain. It’s not a good quality of life living in front of the TV. I always have had to push and go beyond. I want no pity. My legs are atrophied and that is something I can’t control. God must have thought I have the strength to handle it.” 

Shaw is a water colorist and artist, and has sold some of her works. Philip is an avid golfer, and the two have traveled extensively internationally. 

“I want to travel as much as I can before I am in a wheelchair,” she said. 

She said she was quite impressed with Greece. 

“Disabled people can get to the top of the Acropolis. There is a lift. That was totally unexpected,” she said.

The couple loves visiting in the Mediterranean area and the Greek islands. It is beautiful and the people love Americans. They also like to go on cruises. 

“They are extremely easy,” she explained, “even when I’m tired, I can still feel like I am on a vacation.” 

This fall, they will be traveling again internationally, but might start traveling locally next year, she shared, because of the accessibility issues.

They ended up living in Ocala “kind of by accident,” Shaw explained. They had a cabin on a lake in Kentucky and intended to retire there. They checked on how much effort and money it would take to make their cabin handicapped accessible and it seemed too great an endeavor. They saw a video of Ocala on YouTube and “it looked like a nice place. We are impulsive. We liked the online pictures. The amenities at OTOW brought us here,” she said. 

In the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, they put their cottage up for sale, assuming it would take months or even a year to sell it. 

“We had seven offers on the home the first day we put it up for sale,” Shaw exclaimed.

“We love it here. We love the community,” she said. “We don’t have to drive 70 miles to go shopping. The beach is one and a half hours away, and airports are close. And there aren’t many hurricanes that hit directly here.”