Charles Black

Short Biography

Charles Alden Black (March 6, 1919 – August 4, 2005) was a California businessman known for aquaculture and oceanography, and for his marriage to Shirley Temple Black. Black was born in Oakland, California in 1919. Black graduated from Hotchkiss School in Connecticut and Stanford University (class of 1940). His father, James Byers Black, was president of Pacific Gas and Electric Company. Black attended Harvard Business School for one year, and left to enter the Navy in 1941.CareerHe served in the Navy during World War II, as an intelligence officer in the South Pacific, and again during the Korean War as an intelligence officer. After WWII he received his MBA from Stanford in 1946, and then in the late 1950s he lived in Hawaii and worked as an executive for Castle & Cooke and Dole Pineapple companies. By the end of the Korean War he was a lieutenant commander.From 1952 to 1957, he was an executive at the Stanford Research Institute (now known as SRI International) and with Ampex Corp from 1957 to 1965. In the 1960s, Black gravitated to what would become the bulk of his life's work—aquaculture and oceanography. He co-founded a hatchery for oysters and abalone and later created Mardela Corp., a fishery and hatchery company headquartered in Burlingame, California, which conducted ventures such as catfish and salmon farming. He later served as a consultant on maritime issues and served as a regent for Santa Clara University.PersonalHe was married to the legendary former child actress and diplomat Shirley Temple from December 16, 1950, until his death from myelodysplastic syndrome on August 4, 2005, at his home in Woodside, California, at the age of 86. They had a son Charles Alden Black Jr. and a daughter Lori Black.