Larry Stone: Shoe

James Shumkaer died of cancer Tuesday. He was 77.

If you've ever read Jeff MacNelly's comic strip 'Shoe' in your local newspaper, you know James Shumaker. The gruff one in the comic was my first journalism professor at the University of North Carolina. MacNelly created the comic based on his experience as a Shumaker student.

It was the summer of 1990 and I had decided to stay in Chapel Hill for the summer to get ahead. Though I had been in broadcasting for some five years before I entered Journalism 53 at Carolina, I didn't know squat about writing, editing, and reporting. I found that out the first day I walked into the dusty third floor classroom of Howell Hall...and walked into the life of Jim Shumaker.

'Good morning ladies and gentleman and welcome to the wonderful world of newswriting,' Shumaker scoured. A tall, tightly-wound man, Shumaker made you feel like you were coming aboard a luxury liner with a huge hole developing in its hull. His eyes said 'I should let you sink...but I won't.'

He didn't. Instead, he pushed and pulled and prodded and threw erasers at you and shouted...whatever it took to teach you how to write a lead...how to get the facts straight...and how to tell a story.

The rumor around the School of Journalism was that Jim Shumaker did not give A's because no one could satisfy his standards. No one ever knew whether it was true or not, but he no doubt built a lifelong bond with his students because he forced you to learn the right way. You could not sneak through his class. You would become a journalist or would be miserable in failing.

Interestingly enough, underneath his gruff exterior lie the warmest of people. Perhaps that is the real story of why he pushed his students so hard: he cared.

Most of us have been lucky enough to have had a teacher that made a difference in our life. Barbara Richardson steered me toward broadcasting and writing in the fourth grade. As a high school student, William and Lynn Clark encouraged me to follow my dreams, no matter how wild or silly. My aunt and uncle, longtime educators, always encouraged me to strive for academic success and for the things that would make me happy...no one else. Dr. Richard Elam fostered a desire to go down career paths I had never considered.

Jim Shumaker taught me to get it right. Shoe taught that same lesson to thousands of other Carolina students.

Quite a record.