Dr. Russell Dowell Shelton, of Moulton, Alabama, passed away in his home on May 27, 2015. Russell was born on February 17, 1925, in the Appalachian foothills of Boyle County, Kentucky to Lina Ellen Elswick and Drury Jackson Shelton.
While helping with his father’s small tobacco farm, he graduated as Valedictorian of the 1942 class of Junction City High School. After a brief service in the Civilian Conservation Corps, Russell was admitted, with the help of a Presbyterian Church missionary, as a work-study student in Kentucky’s Berea College.
After a year at Berea, Russell walked from Berea to Richmond, Kentucky to join the U.S. Army Air Corps. Despite his yearning to follow two older brothers into World War II combat, Russell was slated to be an instructor and was sent to various radio, electronics, mechanics, and radar schools, where he both finished in the top of his class and also taught.
Returning home with the GI Bill, Russell spent several semesters at Centre College, and then finished at Eastern Kentucky State Teachers College where he received a degree in Mathematics and Physics. While teaching high school in a Kentucky coal mining camp, he noted from a bulletin board posting that he could make more money as a graduate student at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and so he applied for and was accepted in the physics doctoral program. He received his PhD in physics in 1953.
Dr. Shelton was the author of over fifty scientific papers in the areas of physics, ballistics, and astrophysics, and was a visiting lecturer for the American Physical Society in special and general relativity. In later years he authored a book on public education called The Wasting of a People.
Russell taught graduate physics at Texas Christian University, Washington University, and the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the Tennessee Space Institute in Tullahoma and undergraduate physics at the Illinois Institute of Technology, the University of Tennessee and Eastern Kentucky State College.
He held positions of Senior Nuclear Engineer at General Dynamics and Executive Physicist at Admiral Corporation. In 1958 he joined the “Von Braun Team”, where he became NASA Chief of Nuclear and Plasma Physics Division. In 1968 he was appointed Technical Director for the U.S. Army Land Warfare Laboratory during the Vietnam era. He retired from Aberdeen Proving Ground Ballistic Research Laboratory in 1979, receiving the U.S. Army R&D Medal. After his retirement, he taught physics at Calhoun Community College for ten years.
Russell loved music, well known for playing the violin or guitar or mandolin at family events, harmonizing with his wife Pat, and participating in local fiddling competitions. He also enjoyed woodworking and made many of his household furnishings.
Dr. Shelton was preceded in death by his parents, and five siblings, John Montgomery, Vaughn, Donald, Giles Bentley, and Iris Jean Shelton. He is survived by his wife, Patricia Graham Shelton, of Moulton; and one sibling, Joe Shelton, of Huntsville (and spouse Martha). He is also survived by three children, Sharon Sanders, Elayne Shelton, and Russell Shelton Jr.; six grandchildren, John, Kendall, and William Hyatt, and Claire, Emma, and Russell Shelton III; and many other wonderful relatives and friends.
Russell was a member of Courtland Presbyterian Church, and served as an elder in various Presbyterian Churches for more than 50 years.
A memorial service will begin at 2 p.m. in the Chapel of Laughlin Service Funeral Home, Huntsville, on Saturday, June 6, 2015. Visitation will be held immediately after the service in the parlor adjoining the chapel, until 4 p.m.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Courtland Presbyterian Church, at P.O. Box 386, Courtland, AL, 35618.
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