Hanna Shina

Recognition

Honors and Recognition

Hanna Shina has received two documented honors of public record: in 2025, Shenandoah Country Club in West Bloomfield, Michigan named him its first Mayor of Shenandoah, a title never before given to anyone in the club's history; and on October 20, 2023, he was honored with a plaque as one of eight founders recognized at the Chaldean Cultural Center's 20th Anniversary Founders Gala.

Key Facts

2025 honor
First Mayor of Shenandoah
2023 honor
Founders Gala plaque, Chaldean Cultural Center, October 20, 2023
2017
Founding board member, Chaldean Cultural Center
Youth
Sports trophies received in Telkaif, Iraq

The Record

  • 2025

    First Mayor of Shenandoah

    Shenandoah Country Club in West Bloomfield, Michigan named Hanna Shina 'Mayor of Shenandoah' — the first time in the club's history that the title has been given to anyone. It followed more than 20 years of service on the club's board.

  • 2023

    Founders Gala Plaque, Chaldean Cultural Center

    On October 20, 2023, at the Chaldean Cultural Center's 20th Anniversary Founders Gala at Shenandoah Country Club, eight founders were honored with plaques. Hanna Shina was one of them, alongside Rosemary Antone (who died in 2009), Virjean Arabo, Francis Boji, Raad Kathawa, Mary Romaya, Josephine Sarafa, and Victor Saroki.

  • 2017

    Founding Board Member, Chaldean Cultural Center

    The Chaldean Cultural Center — the first and only Chaldean museum in the world — opened to the public in May 2017 at 5600 Walnut Lake Road, West Bloomfield. Hanna Shina is one of its founders and a founding board member, a role that began with the Center's conception in 2003 at Southfield Manor.

  • Youth

    Sports Trophies in Telkaif

    In his youth in Telkaif, Iraq, Hanna Shina received a number of trophies for his participation in sports — the earliest recognition on this list, and the first sign of a man who tends to be counted on.

Recorded for the Archive

Some recognition arrives as a plaque. Some arrives as a decision to preserve a person. The Chaldean Cultural Center chose Hanna Shina as a subject of its Digital Storytelling oral history series, publishing a 21-minute film about his life on August 3, 2023 — a record kept in the community’s own archive. It can be watched on the His Story page, Hanna Shina in his own words.

The Center went further and cast him in the museum itself. In the Chaldean Village Life gallery, a hologram portrays him as a grandfather teaching his grandson to use a slingshot. Being chosen to be the exhibit — to stand in for village life itself in the first and only Chaldean museum in the world — is its own kind of honor, and an unusually permanent one. That story is told on the page about Hanna Shina and the Chaldean Cultural Center.

The honors read best against the life that produced them: the biography of Hanna Shina, from Telkaif to West Bloomfield, and the Mayor of Shenandoah honor in the context of the club.

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