Roberta Sarah Shelnutt

Roberta Sarah Shelnutt, age 85, passed away peacefully in Oxnard, California on Saturday, January 25, 2025, after a week-long battle against pneumonia.

Known to all as Robin, Roberta didn’t discover her given name until she registered herself for kindergarten. She was born and spent her early years in central Washington, then went to the San Diego area to finish junior high and high school. After she met and married the love of her life, Jack Shelnutt, they moved to northern California to begin a family, where she spent fifty-six years as a resident of Red Bluff.

Robin poured her life into her children. Rainy Saturdays and sick days were the best, full of Lincoln Logs, hand puppets, and a wooden doll’s suitcase brimming with little prizes. Her organizational skills and patience made her the perfect Campfire Girls leader and helped her build a successful sewing business. Robin won blue ribbons at the county fair for canning, gardening, and handicrafts. She was active in her church, running their library and making up hundreds of Operation Christmas Child boxes over the years.

When Jack retired from PG&E, he and Robin began their RV adventures. With maps in hand, she was his navigator in forty-nine states and six Canadian provinces. They loved to attend churches in each state they visited. Hawaii was always supposed to be next—as soon as someone built a bridge over the ocean for their trailer. Serving as campground hosts through seventeen seasons for six different agencies, Robin’s favorite was the Jewel Meadow Elk Refuge, where she watched elk cavorting in the apple orchard outside the trailer window.

In 2020, Jack and Robin moved to the Ventura area to live with their daughter, Julie. When the wildflowers are in bloom this spring, Robin’s ashes will be returning north to be interred in the Northern California Veterans Cemetery in Igo.

Robin is survived by her husband, Jack, of sixty-seven years; her children Norma (John) Moore, Jack (Leti) Shelnutt, Julie (Ed) Williams, Glen (Laurie) Shelnutt; twelve grandchildren, fifteen great grandchildren, and one great-great grandchild. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Franklin Graham’s Operation Christmas Child.