Joe Shell - Family Life

Family Life

In 1940, Shell married the former Barbara Morton. The couple divorced in 1968, and she died in 1995. They had five children: Barbara S. Stone and husband Harry Stone of Whittier, Joseph Shell, Jr., of Dana Point, David Morton Shell and wife Merrilee of Elk Grove; Harold Shell and wife Patricia Shell of San Ramon, Diane Shell Morton and husband Paul Morton of San Juan Capistrano, California, and Lynn Shell of Porterville. Lynn was an adopted son and the blood nephew of Barbara Shell. He then married the former Mary Katherine Jaynes, then Mary Hosking, and relocated to her home city of Bakersfield in Kern County. Mary had three children by her second marriage to Richard Hosking (died 1981), he having been a Bakersfield City Council member from 1965-1969. The Hosking children include Geoffrey Richard Hosking (born 1951), Timothy William Hosking (1952–1979), and Meredith Katherine Hosking (1959–1981).

Mary Shell had managed Joe Shell's gubernatorial campaign in Kern County and became the first woman mayor of Bakersfield, having served from 1980-1984. Thereafter, she was a member of the nonpartisan Kern County Board of Supervisors from 1985–1996, having first been elected in a contest against Richard Ybarra, a son-in-law of the Hispanic organized labor activist Cesar Chavez. Joe Shell walked precincts tirelessly on his wife's behalf, but he never again placed his name on a ballot. In the same election in which Mary won the supervisor's seat, son, David M. Shell, lost a publicized race for State Assembly to liberal activist Tom Hayden, former husband of Jane Fonda.