Gus was born in Wirt, Oklahoma on October 19, 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, and Gus was attending parties at Ed Rickets house as a young art student. Gus married his high school sweetheart, Margaret Ruth Barringer in 1941 and shortly thereafter joined the Army, fighting in the Pacific Theater. He told many stories of Saipan.
After WWII ended, he returned to his home and wife. 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 a Full Professor in 1980.
After Margaret died of cancer, he married Emily McGee Cumberland Whitaker. They later relocated to southern Arizona. Together they authored a book, A Potter's Mexico, traveling extensively to Mexican potting villages during the 1970s. They lived in the Tucson area until her passing in 2006. The last three years of his life was spent living in the home of his daughter, Eve and her husband Mathew, in the Dripping Springs area. Gus was surrounded by a loving and caring family until his passing.
Irwin Augustus Whitaker passed away on February 15, 2009. He was 89 years old and known to family and friends as Gus. He is survived by his two children, Eric Whitaker, and Eve Whitaker and her husband Mathew Leibold, their two children, Gabriel and Neil Howe, and step-daughter Jane Cumberland and her two children, Matthew and Charles. He was preceded in death by his first wife of 29 years, Margaret Barringer Whitaker and his second wife of 36 years, Emily McGee Cumberland Whitaker.
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