Effie was a fifth-generation native of Hamilton County, Florida, and a resident of Onslow County, North Carolina, from 1956 to 2004, where she established three successful businesses. Her husband HMC Walter Shaw USN, a medic, died in 1966. While they were dating, he started calling her "Peggy," and the nickname stuck. She was married to H. Charles Shipley 1975–1987. Effie was the sixth child of Andrew Godwin 1865–1942 and Frances Cannon Godwin 1884–1965. She was born at 11:00 am on 11 November 1918, exactly five hours after the Armistice was signed in France, and was the first peacetime child born in Hamilton County after World War I.

Effie grew up on her parents' farm north of White Springs, Florida, and attended Long Branch Methodist Church with her family. She and her sister Ruby both played basketball and were on the 1936 women's state championship business league team. After graduating White Springs High School, Effie earned a business college certificate. By December of 1940, she was working for the state government in Tallahassee and after December of 1941 the state capital was full of servicemen on leave. That's when she met her future husband, Walter Shaw, who was a career USN medic then stationed at Pensacola.

Walter spent most of his time during World War II "somewhere in the Pacific." His bride spent the war in Philadelphia, his home port, raising their daughter Barbara. She saw snow for the first time there in 1943. Though she was far from her family, she wasn't lonely. She had a talent for making friends, and she also had help from her landlords, Mr. and Mrs. Groves, who adored Barbara.

When the USS Yancey was reassigned to the Pacific Fleet late in 1946, Peggy moved household to California. In 1951, Walter started a three-year shore tour and their second daughter, Deborah, was born in Hamilton, Ohio. At each new post, Peggy took a job of increasing responsibility in business. By the time Walter was transferred from Long Beach, California, to the Naval Hospital at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, early in 1956, she was ready to start her own business and be her own boss.

She was efficient and organized. Within a day of her arrival in Jacksonville, she'd made an offer on land suitable for a business with an adjacent home. On her second day, the family moved to the site. Within two months of her arrival, her first business was in operation and the duplex that was their first rental property was ready for tenants. In Onslow County, she became a successful businesswoman. She founded the Carolina Mattress Company and its successor the Carpet House (a retail carpet store), owned rental property, and held a real estate license. She was a charter member and early president of the Jacksonville (NC) chapter of the American Business Women's Association, a sorority sister of Beta Sigma Phi, and a member of Northwoods United Methodist Church for more than forty years.

She died peacefully on Wednesday, 6 July 2011, at her home in Dunwoody, Georgia. Her last words were "Papa . . . Papa." A memorial was held in Atlanta on 29 September 2011. On her 93rd birthday, 11 November 2011, her urn was buried in the Godwin family plot in Riverside Cemetery, White Springs, Fla.

She was the last member of her generation. She was predeceased by her parents, her fifteen aunts and uncles, most of the first cousins of her generation, and her eight siblings: Jack Mullis 1900–1954; Willie Godwin ca1909–ca1910; Johnny Godwin 1912–1943; Gid Godwin 1914–1964; Seal Godwin 1915–1974; Frances "Bessie" Godwin 1917–1998; Gilbert Godwin 1920–1985; and Ruby Godwin 1922–2005. Peggy is survived by daughters Barbara (Ga and NC) and Deborah (NC); granddaughter Karen (NC); great-granddaughters Rachel, Noa, and Molly; sister-in-law Joy Shaw (Calif); many nieces, nephews, Cannon, Downing, Godwin, Herndon, and Hiers cousins in the Wiregrass Georgia area; and many friends in Onslow County.