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He had a way of riffling words to ruffle feathers. His gruff, no-nonsense style as a Chapel Hill newspaper editor inspired an underling to create a cartoon of a stodgy, cigar-smoking old bird who banged out a newspaper on an old typewriter sitting out on a limb. And his death last month left an empty nest within the journalism faculty that will never again be filled with quite the
same passion and flair.
James H. Shumaker -- better known as "Shu" to thousands of friends, former students, and fellow journalists and professors -- died Dec. 19 at UNC Hospitals. He had been hospitalized since mid-November after doctors found cancer in his brain, lungs, liver, shoulder blade and leg. He was 77.
"Shu was a fixed star of love in everybody's constellation," said Walter Spearman Journalism Professor Chuck Stone, Shumaker's longtime colleague and close friend. "We delighted in his blue-eyed irreverence and marveled that he could sing by heart all four verses of `Amazing Grace.' With curmudgeonly tenderness, Shu loved us back, and inspired us to keep on keepin' on until we excelled."
Shumaker taught journalism at the University's School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 1973 and spent more than half a century working in print journalism as a reporter, editor and opinion writer. While working as editor of the Chapel Hill News, he became the inspiration behind the late Jeff MacNelly's popular comic strip, Shoe.
His gift for words held the power to make people love or hate him, depending on which side of his pen they happened to fall. And the red-penciled marks he scribbled on students' papers often left lasting impressions on their lives.
"Jim Shumaker proved to me that it was OK for men to write," said novelist and former student Tim McLaurin. "He wrote beautifully and used his words to make sense of the world, to illuminate and rectify wrongs.
"On a paper of mine in his editorial class, he once wrote: `What you don't know about grammar, spelling, syntax and the like -- and that is considerable -- can be excused in the name of real writing talent.' I could not have received a higher compliment, nor motivation. Since then, I have had seven books published."
UNC President Emeritus William C. Friday said few men made an impact on Chapel Hill with the same force as Shumaker did in his editorial career. "A superior journalist, a loving critic and a first-rate gentleman -- these were his real qualities, and I am so grateful that I was his friend," Friday said.
Newspaper days
Born in Winston-Salem and reared in Durham, Shumaker joined the Army Air Force in 1941. He signed up to be a pilot, but his flying days ended at a pilot-training school in Texas after he buzzed a Greyhound bus.
He ended up as a radio operator flying in the belly of B-24 bombers as they dropped bombs over Germany.
In 1944, his squadron flew into anti-aircraft fire over Albania when another bomber reeled out of control and tore Shumaker's plane in half. Shumaker fought his way out of the wreckage and tumbled out of the plane. Of the 10 crewmen, he was the only one who survived.
He parachuted next to a German barracks and ended up a prisoner of war in Berth until the Soviets liberated the town near the war's end.
In 1947, Shumaker entered Carolina on the G.I. Bill but had little time for classes. At the time, he was already working as a reporter for the Durham Herald. In 1948, he was denied his degree because he failed to take a required freshman hygiene class.
Rather than meet that requirement, Shumaker moved briefly to California, then enrolled at Columbia University in New York City. He later joined the Associated Press, first as a legislative reporter in Columbia, S.C., and then as an editor in Charlotte. In 1952, Shumaker returned to the Herald as state editor and served as managing editor from 1955 to 1959.
"Jim was a good friend and a good newspaperman -- in the best sense of the word," said Clarence Whitefield, who grew up in Durham with Shumaker and worked with him at the Durham Herald. "He was hard-nosed when he needed to be but he had a first-rate sense of humor. But I think he finally found his niche as a professor -- teaching was what satisfied him the most."
From 1959 to 1973, Shumaker edited the Chapel Hill Newspaper, then called the Chapel Hill Weekly. Under his guidance, the Weekly won more than 70 awards and was recognized as one of the finest newspapers of its size in the country.
It was at the Weekly where Shumaker formed a friendship with Carolina art student Jeff MacNelly that would spark the creation of Shoe, one of the world's most popular comic strips. Shumaker unwittingly became MacNelly's inspiration for the strip's main character, P. Martin Shoemaker, the editor of the Treetops Tattler-Tribune who always had sneakers on his talons and spewed gruff sentiments around the cigar in his beak.
MacNelly, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who died last June of lymphoma, got his first professional job at the Weekly.
Shoemaker's sneakers and cigars were borrowed straight from Shumaker, but the real Shumaker was always a far easier boss than the cartoon imitation of him he created, MacNelly once said. "Early on, he basically gave me the freedom to do whatever the hell I wanted to do. I used to walk in the newsroom, and he would say, `What are you going to do today?' I would say, `I don't know,' and he would say, `Fine.'"
Shumaker taught part time at the University in 1972 and was awarded his bachelor's degree the same year. He joined the faculty full time in 1973.
In 1979, he left the University to spend a year working as the editorial page editor for the Wilmington Star News. It was there that Dan Sears, now the photographer for News Services at Carolina, first met him.
"He respected you in the newspaper business -- even the lowly photo department -- because you were out there toiling in the fields the way he had done," Sears said. "I knew he was there and knew there was a legend there writing editorials. He had a healthy distrust of authority and a hatred for pomposity. And he could smell bull---- a mile away."
`Irascible and beloved'
Shumaker returned to Carolina in 1980 and was met with less than open arms from some on the faculty. Richard Cole, dean of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, summed up the entire episode this way: "Shu got mad and resigned from the faculty in 1979 to go to Wilmington and write editorials for the paper there. But soon he realized that his real place was in our school teaching students, so he contacted me about getting his faculty position back.
"I put it to the faculty, which voted 50 percent for him to return, and 50 percent not to return. I'm proud that I broke the tie vote and said, `Come on back.'"
In a Dec. 31 column that appeared, fittingly enough, in the Chapel Hill News, Stone spoke of a man of contradictions who managed to be both irascible and beloved. "Untamed snow-white hair frolicked around his balding pate, while a forbidding blue-eyed stare and a gruff voice demanded relentless excellence," Stone wrote. "... `Quintessential curmudgeon,' indeed, but tender, witty and so full of irreverent quips, you wanted to follow him around like a star-struck Boswell, jotting down his dollops of wisdom accumulated from almost eight decades."
In the same column, Stone told of his visit with Shumaker two weeks before he died. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Stone coaxed Shumaker into eating some soup. "He instructed me to break up crackers and put them in the soup. After following his instructions, I recounted the pleasure of eating soup like this.
"`OK,' he quipped. `YOU eat it.'"
In such courses as newswriting, editorial writing and other classes, Shumaker taught thousands of students and mentored hundreds of journalists across the globe. His dedication to teaching brought him the Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the Favorite Faculty Award and a term professorship in his name.
"Shu had a rather unconventional way of inspiring his students -- he never cared much for using a syllabus," Cole said. "He turned them on to excellence in writing; he turned them on to excellence in journalism. He was like the head of a comet, with all those students he inspired dotting the sky behind him."
Shumaker is survived by his wife Doris, a prominent artist; nine children; four grandchildren and one great-grandson.
Memorial contributions may be made to Mount Hermon Baptist Church, 4511 Old N.C. 10, Durham, NC 27705.
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