in a one-room schoolhouse for two years before deciding to pursue a law career. He moved to Vincennes, Indiana, in the spring of 1907 and began law school at Indiana University in Bloomington that fall. Shake, an avid storyteller, later recalled that while he was living in Vincennes, Jacob Gimbel, owner of a Vincennes department store that later became Gimbels in New York, offered to pay for his law studies at IU as long as he agreed to help another student in a similar manner in the future. Shake agreed to Gimbel's proposal. Shake earned a law degree from Indiana University in 1910. Among his classmates were Paul V. McNutt, a future governor of Indiana; Sherman Minton, a future Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; and Wendell Willkie, the Republican Party's nominee in the 1940 presidential election. Shake also met his first wife, Anna Selesky, a Czech immigrant and a fellow law student, while attending IU. Shake and Anna married in June 1911; their son, Gilbert, was born the following year. Career Early years Shake established a law practice in Bicknell, Indiana, following his graduation from law school in 1910. After six years in Bicknell, where Shake served as city attorney and as Knox County's deputy prosecuting attorney, he moved his family and law practice to Vincennes in 1916 and formed a law partnership with Joseph W. Kimmel. While living in Vincennes, Shake also held positions as city attorney, U.S. commissioner for the southern Indiana judicial district, and Knox County attorney. In 1926 Shake was elected as a Democrat to represent Knox and Daviess Counties in the Indiana Senate. Shake was an active state senator who coauthored the Lindley-Shake-Johnson law that reduced tax assessments on Indiana farmland. In 1928 Shake became the Democratic Party's nominee for Indiana Attorney General, but lost the race. A week before the election, John Rabb Emison, a Vincennes lawyer, announced at a Republican Party gathering in Indianapolis that Shake was a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. Emison asserted that Shake had joined Knox County Klan Number 75 on September 30, 1924, and produced a membership book to support the claim. Emison also proclaimed that the Klan had provided Shake with support during his campaign for the Indiana Senate in 1926, but Shake had discontinued paying his membership dues when the Klan organization became unpopular. It is not known with certainty whether or