As a young naval officer, Charles Black drove torpedo boats behind enemy lines to gather intelligence during World War II. He became a pioneer in the maritime industry—helping found an oyster and abalone hatchery at Pigeon Point, Calif., and the Marquest Group in Massachusetts, which developed unmanned deep-ocean search and survey imaging systems. A recreational yachtsman, he twice crewed in the TransPacific Race from the Golden Gate to the finish line off Diamond Head. And America knew him best as the husband of Shirley Temple, the Hollywood child star so famous she became a cocktail name.
The head of Mardela Corp., a Burlingame, Calif., fishery and hatchery company, Black died August 4 at his home in Woodside, Calif., of complications from myelodysplastic syndrome, a bone marrow disease. He was 86.
Born in Oakland, a descendant of the Mayflower’s John Alden and the Cherokee chief Oconostota, Black was raised in San Francisco. He attended the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut before arriving at Stanford. (His father, James, a onetime president and chairman at Pacific Gas and Electric, served as a trustee for a decade, starting in 1950.) A member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity, he earned his bachelor’s degree in three years.
After attending Harvard Business School for a year, he joined the Navy in 1941, serving as an intelligence officer first in Australia and then on Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s staff. Later, as a scout behind enemy lines in Indonesia, he made more than 100 PT boat patrols and earned the Silver Star for valor. After the war, he finished his MBA at Stanford. He served as a commander in the reserves during the Korean War.
In 1950, the diehard surfer was working in Hawaii when he was invited to a party for Shirley Temple, who was 22 and had made more than 40 movies. He told the hosts he would come only if the waves weren’t up. “We would never have met if the surfing was good that day,” Shirley Temple Black told the (Menlo Park) Almanac after her husband’s death. The couple married that same year.
Black was a regent of the University of Santa Clara, and was a member of the board of the College of Notre Dame. A Bohemian Club member, he was one of six founders of the Guardsmen, a San Francisco charity. He accompanied his wife when she, active in the Republican Party, was appointed ambassador to Ghana, then chief of protocol for the United States and then ambassador to Czechoslovakia.
Black is survived by his wife; two children, Charles Black Jr. and Lori Black; a stepdaughter, Susan Falaschi, ’71; a granddaughter, Teresa Falaschi, ’03, MA ’03; and a brother, James, ’40.
