Gus was born in Oklahoma in 1919 and during the Great Depression his family moved to California. Gus grew up on the Monterrey Peninsula where his father managed a fishing cannery. This was at the time John Steinbeck was writing Cannery Row. Gus and Ed Ricketts were friends. Gus joined the Army, fighting in the Pacific Theater in WWII. He told many stories of the Japanese island of Saipan where he was a logistics officer in the Army Air Force . He attended college on the G.I. Bill, eventually receiving a Master of Fine Arts from Claremont College in California. He began his teaching career at Oregon State University. Soon after, Gus joined the Art Department of Michigan State University in 1950. He was a highly skilled potter of elegant functional forms, exhibiting his work all over the country. He later used his skills in ceramic glazing to produce beautiful landscapes of enamels on copper. He retired in 1980. 

Gus and family then relocated to southern Arizona. Together they authored a book, A Potter's Mexico, traveling extensively to Mexican potting villages during the 1970s.

Irwin Augustus Whitaker passed away in 2009. He was 89 years old and known to family and friends as Gus.