Earlier this summer, NCI at Frederick lost a friend and colleague, Charles Shive, to cancer.
Mr. Shive, better known to most as Charlie, was a systems architect and information technology manager for the Data Science and Information Technology Program, focused on the re-engineering initiative of the Clinical Trials Reporting System. There, he led a team of seven software engineers. Previously, Mr. Shive, who was 51, served as the lead engineer for a team from Leidos Biomedical Research that supports the NCI Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research Branch.
Braulio Cabral, who supervised Mr. Shive for the past two years, called him “a great colleague and friend, always willing to go the extra mile to help others and advance our mission.” That mission had become more personal for Mr. Shive after losing a brother to cancer.
Mr. Shive was born and raised in Chatham, N.J. He showed an early flair for music, and was a mainstay of the marching bands of Chatham High School and the University of Maryland, College Park, his alma maters. As his Leidos and NCI colleagues would later come to understand, Mr. Shive also had an aptitude for computers, and he worked to master hardware, software, networking, and project management. His wide-ranging interests also included science, astronomy, and medicine.
Mr. Shive was devoted to his daughters, Leah and Keira, whose favorite activities include trips to the park, vacationing with family, visiting New Jersey, and going on cruises and road trips to Disney attractions, the beach, and national parks.
“Even as Charlie’s cancer progressed,” his wife, Joanna Wei Zhao, wrote, “he always seemed to be in the best of spirits. Nurses commented that he was the nicest patient they had ever seen… He fought the long odds with dignity and strength so that he could maximize his time with his wife and girls.”
Mr. Shive died May 19, 2016. He is also survived by aunts Rosemary Munch and Eileen Speck, uncle Tom Briskey, and numerous loving friends.