Charles Alden Black
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Charles Black was a California businessman, who was born on March 6, 1919 in Oakland,California. He was married to the actress and diplomat Shirley Temple Black 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.
Black graduated from Hotchkiss School in Connecticut and Stanford University (class of 1940). His father, James Byers Black was President of Pacific Gas & Electric Co. Black attended Harvard Business School for 1 year and left to enter the Navy in 1941.
He 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 1940s he lived in Hawaii and worked as an executive for Castle & Cook and Dole Pineapple companies. By the end of the Korean War he was a Lieutenant-Commander.
During the 1950s he was an executive at the Stanford Research Institute (now known as SRI International) and Ampex Corp. but in the 1960s 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.