Shirley Mae Gordon, 81, died unexpectedly on Wednesday, December 2, 2020, in her home in Reeds Ferry.

Auntie Shirley was born in Londonderry to Duane Currier and Marion Rose (Miner) Gordon on September 16, 1939. After the family relocated to Merrimack when she was two, she never lived anywhere else. She graduated Valedictorian of the class of 1957 at Merrimack High School. She took a variety of courses at UNH and Sheffield School of Interior Design in NY, among others.

She held a variety of jobs throughout her life but was most proud of her work at Law Motor Freight in Nashua, where she worked her way up from a two-month 'office girl' trial period to Vice President of Administration. She was pugnaciously independent, but fiercely loyal to her family; she left Law to care for her bedridden mother, simply so Gaga could remain in her own home rather than a nursing home. She enjoyed visiting family, traveling, local history, genealogy, painting ceramics, decorating, crafting wedding favors and holiday decorations, and scrapbooking. She always had a camera in her hands and was always the main source of pictures from family reunions and get-togethers. She was the keeper of family records and history, and was generally the first told about family births, marriages, and deaths. She was an extremely private person, and she loved her family more deeply than anything else in the world. No matter how harshly she spoke or how contrary she was, however, she was known as an insightful and intelligent adviser, a trusted yet nosy confidante, and a protective and honest executrix of multiple wills. When you truly needed her, she was there for as long as necessary. She will be greatly missed.

She was predeceased by her father in 1982 and mother in 1992, all of her siblings, Carolyn Joyce (Gordon) Levesque of Merrimack in 1997, Nancy Ann (Gordon) McRoberts of Merrimack in 2002, Alice Irene (Gordon) Campbell of Hudson in 2009, and Duane Currier Gordon Jr. of Fort Royal, VA in 2014, and three nephews, infant Kenneth Duane Gordon, Robert Oscar Campbell Jr. of Hudson in 1988, and Duane Howard McRoberts of Merrimack in 2018.

She is survived by three sisters-in-law, Pauline (Charest) Gordon of Manchester, Susan G. Miller of Richmond, VA, and Nora (Keyes) Gordon of Manchester Center, VT, along with many nieces and nephews, great-nieces and -nephews, great-great-nieces and -nephews, and hundreds of cousins.

Family and friends of Shirley Mae Gordon are respectfully invited to attend her visitation hours at the Rivet Funeral Home, 425 Daniel Webster Highway, Merrimack NH on Saturday, September 16th, 2023 from 12 Noon to 2 PM with a brief service to follow in the funeral home chapel at 2 PM.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Merrimack Fire and Police Departments, the Diabetes Research Institute Foundation, or a charity of your choice.