Tar Heel Profile
Bv Scot! Smith
Rebel With A Cause
UNC journalism professor Jim Shumaker has always
blazed his own trail.
im Shumaker always walks to a
different beat.
As he races to lunch one dreary
Chape l Hill day with two writers in
the midst of a torrential downpour, he
refuses to take the longer neater route
on a brick pathway like the others.
Instead, with his ankle-high leather
boots, he darts across the University of
North Carolina campus to Franklin
Street in a straight line, splashing mud all
the way.
“Where are you going," asks Raleigh
Л
Vue aiui Observer editorial writer Jim
Jenkins.
Shumaker, a UNC journalism profes¬
sor. grunts something and continues on.
The two men. as it is with so many of his
former reporters and students, try to fol¬
low his footsteps, if for no other reason
than the fact that Shumaker is going that
way.
Once inside Linda's, his favorite
lunchtime eatety, Shumaker orders a
vegetable plate and soon lx*gins a story
about two of his former students who
recently came by to visit him. One is now
a minister, the other a policewoman.
"I must have had a helluva impact on
them," he deadpans.
He has a presence about him.
Shumaker does.
It can be intimidating. It can Ik- rau¬
cous. It can Ik- reassuring.
Whatever it is. it's addictive to those
around him. Reporters who have worked
for him and students who have learned
under his tutelage all say about the same
thing: You fear his wrath, but somehow
you’re drawn to this veteran newspaper¬
man.
“I lived in dread of being called down
on the carpet, but every little bit of praise
made my day." says Allen Norwood, a for¬
mer reporter under editor Shumaker at
the Chape! Hill Weekly in the early 1970s.
“He has a way of roaring at you.
’Norwood, this is dog vomit!’ Then, a
week later, he'll casually walk by your
Jim Shumaker, alias 'Shoe'
desk, bang on yout typewriter twice and
say under his breath. ‘Damn good job.’
Thai would keep you going for a month.
It must lx- the same w-ay lot his students
today."
The 71-year-old Durham native is now
in his 23rd year of teaching news writing
and editorial writing at t'NC's School of
Journalism. Before that, he was the long¬
time editor of the Chape l Hill Weekly,
where his penchant for throwing type¬
writers across the newsroom in Fils of
rage made fertile ground for his current
status as a legendary Tar Heel scribe.
Folks around Orange County should
have known this Shumaker guy was dif¬
ferent hack in the late 40s when he
steadfastly refused to take a |xrsonal
hygiene course* that would have allowed
him to graduate from UNC. (He eventu¬
ally earned his degree in 1072 when he
correctly identified a bar of soap lot for¬
mer UNC President William Friday in a
mock ceremony.)
Even with his degree now in hand.
Shumaker admits lie wasn't much of a
student back then. After surviving four
years as a lighter pilot in World War II —
the last 20 months as a prisoner of war —
it’s easy to see why college soil of
dimmed by comparison.
The Air Force pilot was shot down lim ¬
ing an Allied air strike on the Ploesti oil
fields in Rumania on August 5. 1943. As
luck would have it. he landed 100 yards
from a German camp. I le spent time in
three different German POW camps.
“The last year we were just existing,"
Shumaker rcmemlx-rs. "The Germans
couldn't feed themselves, let alone us.
Young boys and old men were all that was
left to guard us. One day the Russians
came through with small aims fire, whole
families of them, drunk as hell. They
scared us worse than the Germans did."
When he returned from the war. be¬
took advantage of the GI Bill and
enrolled at UNC. Shumaker spent most
of Ids collt*ge «lays covering city hall for
his hometown Durham Mannng Herald.
"I went in to talk to the editor, who
asked me why I should get the job,"
Shumaker remembers. ”1 s;iid. 'Because I
was bom and raised here and know tills
town like the back of my hand.'
"I le said. 'Do you know where city hall
is?'" Shumaker nodded. “Well, get over
there."
Shumaker made $24 a week in that
first job.
I spent 60. 70 hours a week at city
hall." he says. "I seldom went to classes."
Shumaker left Durham in 1950 for a
three-year stint in Charlotte working for
the Associated Press. He hated the job
and returned to the Herald in 1953.
where he served as state editor and even¬
tually managing editor. In 1958. he made
a fateful move to the upstart Cha/rrl Hill
Weekly as its editor. It was the beginning
of a tumultuous 15-yeat rollercoaster
ride in which “Yellow Dog Democrat"
Shumaker and conservative publisher
Orville Campbell would butt heads time
and time again. At the Weekly, Shumaker
became the subject of legendary news¬
room tales concerning his temper and
jocularity. Depending upon which side
you listen to. he was either fired or quit
on four separate occasions. I le was also
known to throw a typewriter clear across
a newsroom if the mood hit him just
right.
“Yes. I've thrown typewriters." he
admits. "But you have to remember that
I quit four times. One time someone put
this huge boulder in my office and had a
note attached that said. ‘This is what I
think of your editorials.' That was one
occ asion I threw a typewriter.’
Pluxn In Soili VnnS
The Stialr/lum.- 1995
33