Lottie Shivers turned 100 a few weeks ago and, to celebrate her long life and the contributions she and her late husband have made to the neighborhood, BHCA’s Blue Plaque Committee gave her a surprise gift: a Bolton Hill Blue Plaque honoring her late husband.
“It was a wonderful thing,” she said. It was Frank Shivers, after all, who long ago created Bolton Hill’s Blue Plaque program, a vehicle for recognizing significant people who lived in some of the finer houses in the neighborhood over many past decades. Barbara Blumberg, who chairs the committee that authorizes the plaques, conspired with another long-time resident, Charlie Duff and with Duff’s friend Neil Hertz, and with the Shivers’ four adult children to make it happen.
The plaque calls attention to books that Frank Shivers wrote about Baltimore and Bolton Hill. As is often the case, Ms. Shivers was an unsung hero in his writing and promoting the neighborhood, including the successful effort to create and name the park on Bolton and Wilson honoring writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lived nearby as he wrote the novel Tender is the Night. (BHCA will host the annual Fitzgerald birthday party on Sept 24. Were he still alive he would be 129.)
The Shivers couple moved to the neighborhood from Cincinnati and bought their house on Bolton Street in 1955. He died there in 2021, and she continues to reside there. “I love the house and have never wanted to move,” Lottie Shivers said.
As for living 100 years? “I keep doing the things I’ve been doing. If someone didn’t call attention to my 100th birthday, I might not have noticed.”
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