Beverly Shade Passes
Lifetime member was a veteran of the game and regarded as a matriarch
The Cauliflower Alley Club is saddened to learn of the passing of lifetime member Beverly Shade. Ms. Shade, regarded as a women's wrestling pioneer and a matriarch to so many lady wrestlers was a fixture at the yearly reunions in Las Vegas.
Slam Wrestling reported the news on their website yesterday evening.
"A women’s wrestling trailblazer, Beverly “The Hammer” Shade, has died at the age of 87, due to a combination of lung cancer, pneumonia, blood clots and fluid in her lungs. She had only recently been moved from hospital to hospice, her body too weak for chemotherapy or radiation.
Her husband, Billy Blue River, shared the news simply in an email: “At 830 pm my Beverly died.”
Beverly Shade may be gone, but oh what a life.
“The first time I saw women wrestle, I said heck I can do that! I was going every Friday night to St. Louis to the matches. I pestered Sam Muchnick (promoter) so he finally sent me to Cowboy Lutrell in Tampa, Florida,” recalled Shade once to SlamWrestling. “I was trained by Ella Waldek. That was 1957. Worked off and on for about three years, started back in 1968 and worked till 1989.”
But Shade’s first experience with a pro wrestler came before that. In 2022, she talked about meeting Gorgeous George:
When I was only 17 years old, my dad was stationed at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. And I worked at the drugstore where my mother worked, behind the soda fountain. I was a soda jerk. And they used to run wrestling in Newport News, and we lived in Hampton. And they would come by and put posters in the window for the wrestling matches in Newport News. And so we got to know the guy and he would give us passes to go to wrestling matches. And we went one night and Gorgeous George was wrestling and his beautician didn’t show up. So the guy came out and said, ‘Beverly, do you think you could do his hair?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know, I do mine, I guess I could try.’ So I went back and did his hair. Had no idea what a big star he was at the time. I was just a wrestling fan, didn’t care. In fact, George and Bobby Becker from North Carolina were on the card. I did his hair, and he handed me a handful of those bobby pins.
Please read Beverly's obit in it's entirety on the Slam Wrestling website, at the following link:
https://slamwrestling.net/index.php/2023/06/03/womens-wrestling-great-beverly-shade-dies/
Rest in peace Beverly. The Cauliflower Alley Club family sends it sincerest condolences to your family, friends and legions of fans both in the ring and out.
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