Memorials › Ann Marie Pokorny Esgate

Ann Marie Pokorny Esgate

20 Aug 1909 – 12 Apr 2002

Birth	20 Aug 1909
Death	12 Apr 2002
Cemetery	Sunset Hills Memorial Park Bellevue , King County , Washington , USA
Added by	Karen Bruton on 03 Dec 2016
FaG	https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8099166

Bio

After a lifetime of dancing, from her Seattle chorus-girl youth to her belly-dancing years at the Renton Senior Activity Center, Ann Esgate didn't let a wheelchair end her performing career. An autoimmune disease robbed her feet of feeling for several years when Mrs. Esgate reached her late 80s. But when sensation returned, so did her dance instincts. "The first thing she did was try to tap-dance," said Darlene Jones, who taught dance with Mrs. Esgate at the Renton center. At first Mrs. Esgate just tapped her feet as she sat in her wheelchair. But with the help of friends, she eventually stood and performed a tap routine. "She enjoyed life, she really did," Jones said. "I never saw her anything but cheerful and always ready to do something, go some place." Mrs. Esgate died Friday (April 12) of natural causes at the Masonic Retirement Home in Des Moines. She was 92. For more than 20 years, Mrs. Esgate was a dining-room hostess at the Rainier Club, then the city's most elite private social club. She quit around 1958 when she married for a second time. In 1984, she returned as a waitress. Mrs. Esgate retired from the club for good in 1991 at age 82. But she taught tap-dancing at the senior center for four more years, stopping only when her illness, polyarteritis, slowed her down. She was born in 1909 in Omaha, Neb., where she met her first husband, Donn Shankland. He was a telephone lineman and she an operator. "He looked down the line of operators, saw the prettiest one and married her," said their son, retired Seattle fire Capt. Richard Shankland of Gig Harbor, Pierce County. The couple moved to Seattle in 1928, and Mrs. Esgate spent several years as a dancer and chorus girl working at theaters such as the Palomar, Paramount and Rivoli. After her first son was born in 1930, she began giving children's dance lessons out of their home in Rainier Valley. They moved in 1939 to the Beacon Hill area, where they lived for nearly 20 years. Donn Shankland was a Seattle firefighter, too, eventually earning the rank of lieutenant. But his hobby in those days was building wrestling rings, so many of the area's best-known wrestlers -- such as the Masked Marvel and Soldat Gorky, known as the Mad Russian Wolfman -- were often guests in their home. The couple divorced in 1951. Seven years later, she married Ray Esgate. That launched an adventurous period in her life. "Ray was a hard-rock miner; as he got different jobs out of town they'd haul around a house trailer," Richard Shankland said. "Mount Adams, different places in the Cascades -- it was a lot of fun. Salmon rivers, feeding deer off your front doorstep." When Ray Esgate died in the mid-1960s, Mrs. Esgate returned to Beacon Hill. She eventually bought a mobile home in the Renton area and moved into the Masonic home in 1996. Mrs. Esgate's friends and associates at the Renton senior center admired her sophistication -- and her "gorgeous" showgirl legs. "She encouraged people; she tolerated their (dancing) imperfections," said Debbie Little, the center's recreation specialist. "In the springtime, we put on a show where people come and watch these performances on stage. Ann didn't care if everyone was synchronized. She wanted them to be out there and enjoying themselves, taking a risk, trying something new." Mrs. Esgate is also survived by her eldest son, Donn Shankland of Burien, four grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. Services will be at 10 a.m. today at Greenwood Funeral Home in Renton. The family asks that remembrances be made to St. Philomena Church, 1790 S. 222nd St., Des Moines, WA 98198. Ann EsgateAuthor: Diane Brooks Edition: Fourth Page: B8 Copyright (c) 2002 The Seattle Times

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