Robert Hinshaw

Robert Yost Hinshaw, a public relations executive and consultant, died Monday at the age of 96 at his home in Ithaca, NY. He was born in New York City on July 4, 1917, son of David and Augusta Wiggam Hinshaw. He lived many years in New York City and for the past 45 years in Ithaca. He was a Quaker, graduated from Princeton University, and served in World War II. In the 1930s, Robert worked as a reporter for famed editor William Allen White's Emporia Gazette in Kansas. In the 1940s, Robert served as a campaign advisor to New York Governor Tom Dewey in his two presidential campaigns. He also served as a close advisor to the presidential campaigns of Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. During the 1940 Dewey campaign, he met and subsequently married Lillias Dulles Hinshaw, the daughter of the late Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. His wife Lillias died of cancer in 1987. Robert was an avid tennis player. One of his greatest joys in life was teaching promising tennis players in the community. He is survived by two daughters, Janet Hinshaw-Thomas, and her husband Jamiel of Rutledge, Pa., Lila H. Erlandson and her husband Alvin, of Livermore, California; two sons, David Y. Hinshaw, New York City, and Foster D. Hinshaw and his wife Donna Stone, Cambridge, Mass.; sister, Sarah Ann Rickerman of Newark, DE, four grandchildren, and four great grandchildren. Funeral services will be celebrated by Rev. Richard Towers on Saturday, July 27, 2013 at 10 a.m. at the Bangs Funeral Home. Interment will follow at Frear Memorial Park.