Shirley Raiche Dunkle

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution announces with great sorrow the death of former employee Shirley Raiche Dunkle of Falmouth on July 12, 2022. She was 93.

Born and raised in Fairhaven, Mass., Shirley received her BS in Mathematics from Marietta College in Ohio. Her first job after graduation was as a (human) computer at MIT. She began her career at WHOI in 1952 as a mathematical assistant. She left in 1958. While at WHOI, she met her husband, Bill Dunkle, square dancing at the Community Center. She remembers being swung very enthusiastically by Bill! They married in 1956 and purchased a 150-year-old historic home in North Falmouth, lovingly restoring it room by room over the next fifty years, while raising their two daughters, Karen, and Debbie.

In addition to caring for her family, Shirley tended a large victory garden, planned annual family camping trips, helped craft, and sell handmade wooden puzzles at a local craft gallery, spent time with friends, followed the Red Sox, learned to fly kites, did puzzles of all sorts, became fascinated with stargazing, and completed extensive genealogical research on the family tree.

Shirley’s greatest passion, however, was music. She sang all her life, including in the St. Barnabas Episcopal and North Falmouth Congregational Church choirs, madrigal groups, chamber choirs, Falmouth Interfaith Choir, and Falmouth Chorale. She taught elementary school music in Falmouth schools. As a child, she learned to play the piano and the violin and she had the rare gift of perfect pitch.

She was the wife of the late William M. Dunkle, Jr. and the late Deborah Dunkle Clemons.

Shirley leaves her daughter, Karen Dunkle Hotte, of Marion, Mass; beloved sons-in-law, Brian Clemons, of Hanson, Mass., and Russell Hotte, of Marion, Mass; beloved grandchildren, Andrew, Josiah, and Bethany Clemons, Catherine Herr, Jocelyn Maré, Brittany Taylor, and Christian Hotte; as well as six great-grandchildren.

A Memorial Service will be held at the North Falmouth Congregational Church, 155 Old Main Rd., North Falmouth, Mass., at 11 a.m. on Saturday, July 30, 2022, with interment to follow at the North Falmouth Cemetery.

Memorial donations may be made to the North Falmouth Congregational Church, PO Box 403, North Falmouth, Mass., 02556-0403.

Information for this obituary is from the Cape Cod Times