THE MANY HATS OF ROBERT CARLTON SHEPARD
Written by Robert's sons, Robert L. and Donald W. Shepard for their father's memorial service in September 2014
Robert C. Shepard was born hatless in '33; the son of a Firestone man and a straight-laced mom, in the December darkness of tire factory smog in Akron, Summit, Ohio. His brother Fred and sister Milla, 10 and 8 years older, weren't so ready to play. Young Bobby wasted no time inventing friends with Surzibus and Izzy, who, though imagined, were no stranger than the motley crew of neighborhood kids who swatted baseballs with him in consecutive summers. He played with kids like Tommy Cannan, whose mitt was tragically flattened by a runaway steamroller. Bobby's imagination was also populated from the pages of Captain Marvel comic books. So whenever his ball games were rained out, he traded in his ball cap for a journalist's green eyeshade, to work on his own comic strip, the adventures of Wolfermank and his loyal sidekick Sokey Dog. In 1939, Firestone had a pavilion at the New York World's Fair, and appointed Bobby's father to work there, at a sleek, modern, smelly demonstration of the tire manufacturing process. The entire family lived in New York City during that year, giving young Bobby a big city experience.
Young Bob's high school friends traded glimpses of hot rod magazines hidden within their textbooks, drooling with lust over the paint jobs and exhaust manifolds. Eventually their daydreams burst into bloom, they donned their motoring caps, and founded the first drag racing club east of the Mississippi, the Cam Jammers of Akron, Ohio. Bob upholstered his vehicle with leopard, and became known as Shepard the Leopard. Their car radios blasted the forbidden jazz, rhythm and blues which was then known as race music, broadcast on WAKR by the not-yet-famous DJ Alan Freed. (Alan Freed later went on to popularize the term "rock and roll" in the early 50s, and became rock music's earliest and most successful promoter, before tragically losing his reputation in the famous Payola Scandal.) These blues and soul precursors to rock music moved Shepard so much, that he began to haunt the radio studio and pester the DJ, until Freed finally befriended him, and took him into the sound booth while spinning records. Meanwhile, Bob had to pay for his car parts somehow. So he took his first job in the office of Firestone headquarters, in one of the first computerized operations in the country, making tiny marks on IBM cards with a number two pencil.After high school, he joined the US Marine Corps Reserve and put on a garrison cap - affectionately known as the piss cutter. Bob endured the indignities of training and bunking among characters with which he was less than enamored, surviving with a few key friends, and settling into the maintenance of the F4U Corsair fighter planes, used by the Corps for training at that time. While stationed near Memphis, he and his buddies often drove into town to hear live music, and frequently defied orders by crossing over to the wrong side of the tracks to patronize Chitlin' Circuit clubs, where the latest and most genuine jazz and blues music could be heard. (The Chitlin' Circuit was a network of African American-owned music establishments throughout the south, the east coast, and the mid-west during segregation times.)
Robert Sr. and Mildred Shepard, and Bob, had joined the throng of Midwesterners retiring to Florida in 1954. As a Reservist, Bob occasionally had time to visit them there for extended periods. He went briefly hatless, baring his freshly minted physique to learn water-skiing and roofing in the hot Florida sun. Bob was just a cool cat exploring the Miami area night life. One time he went to see the great Coleman Hawkins, only to find the legendary sax man playing to a nearly empty house. So in between sets, just to be polite, you understand, he sat down with The Hawk and had a couple of casual beers with him. That's how cool he was. But his greatest jazz discovery at that time, was a little-known high school band teacher who played weekends in a riverside dive in Fort Lauderdale. Following up on a newspaper ad, Bob walked into that club and the atmosphere was electric with anticipation. The crowd was chanting "Cannonball! Cannonball!" Until finally the erudite and corpulent Julian Cannonball Adderley took the stage along with his combo, and blew the roof off the place. Shepard always claimed that he predicted great things for Cannonball at that moment. And indeed, Adderley went on to New York and joined the Miles Davis band, and ultimately had a successful career of his own.
Bob's time in Florida was cut short when he realized that he couldn't make a decent living there. He returned to Firestone and was invited to join a class in how to become a supervisor. He graduated from this class and was made supervisor in the Steel Products plant where workers were making bomb shells and airplane parts. Bob also returned to Akron to continue courting Marj Mackey, a public school music teacher in town. They married in June 1956, bought a new trailer home, and parked it in a trailer park that had an outdoor swimming pool.
One of Bob's many career moves in those days was a brief stint as a repo man for a disreputable financial institution. He often told of a dark night plying his trade, when he was confronted and chased down the street by a dissatisfied customer swinging a chain. Bob found a safer and more stable occupation at the US Postal Service, where he worked as a clerk for several years, and became union chief for his branch in Cuyahoga Falls.
It was during these years that Bob began attending night school classes at Akron U. He also began to participate in a discussion group run by the Great Books Program. Also, Bob and Marj took an interest in the Unitarian-Universalist church, and joined a congregation. In these years of the late 50s and early 60s, the Civil Rights movement was frequently in the headlines. Bob and Marj stood up for these values, and helped to steer their church leadership towards a more activist position. Bob even went to Washington DC once to join a protest march.
The couple moved from their trailer home into a brick duplex in Cuyahoga Falls. And by mid-February of 1959, they produced a baby boy, who was given the name of his father. Both of the new child's grandfathers, as well as a cousin, also bore the name Robert. This strategy made it easy to remember. But it also ensured confusion throughout the entire family for years to come.
In those days, recreational camping was still somewhat of a novelty. But the young Shepard family packed toddler Bobby into the back of their VW Beetle, along with sleeping bags and a tent, and drove off to discover America. Gas station attendants mocked their load of equipment. Neighbor campers gloated silently as Bob and Marj struggled to set up their new canvas tent. But with a little practice - mostly in the mountains and woodlands of Pennsylvania, New York state, and New Hampshire - they soon became proficient, happy campers.
A new baby was on the way, and the Shepards moved into a new home in the Akron suburb of Stow. In April of 1962, the new baby arrived, and they named him Donald. But he soon became known as Dooney. The role of fatherhood suited Bob just as snug as his postal clerk’s visor. He didn’t mind rolling around on the floor with his kids, or putting band-aids on their scuffed up knees.
Although mid-century suburbia was not without its charms - such as aqua leatherette moon chairs, percolated coffee, and unending games of bridge - the Shepard family continued to check out from time to time, on one of their kooky camping trips. It was in 1966 that a big adventure was planned to explore the western states. They bought a VW camper van, filled it up with Coleman camping gear, and headed off toward the setting sun. The exhilaration of those wide open spaces had a profound effect on the four of them. They visited several spectacular National Parks and Monuments of the southwest that year, including the Painted Desert, Petrified Forest, and Bryce Canyon. But it was the overwhelming color and scale of the Grand Canyon that converted the Shepards, in an epiphany of wonderment, to a new faith: that they had a destiny ahead, under western skies.
Suddenly, Akron seemed stifling. The horizon was too close; the skies chewy with rubber dust, and suffocating to take by the lungful. The Shepards, who had tasted actual oxygen, would not be contained there any longer. A plan was set into motion to sell the house in Stow and auction off most of their belongings - even the boys’ toys. Like the pioneers of a century before, the entire family was invested in the commitment to a new adventure. They intended to find a new place to live.
Robert gave notice at the Stow Post Office, Marjorie finished out her school year teaching music at Ritzman, and a new feeling of freedom set in. With his crusher hat on, and nearly everything sold off, Dad herded his family into the VW bus once again, in June of 1967. In an homage to Bob’s childhood, they headed not west, but northeast - to Montreal, for the new version of the World’s Fair: Expo ‘67.
Its theme of international co-operation and its breezy optimism, at a time when the Cold War nuclear jitters prevailed in the real world, gave the Expo an almost utopian atmosphere. This spirit propelled the family onward, still not westward, but toward the south, where they paid a visit to Robert’s parents in Florida.
Now well-stocked with mangos and avocados plucked from neighborhood trees, and a few quarts of honey produced by the senior Robert’s beehives, the intrepid Volkswagen bus was finally pointed to the west. Stops along the way included Biloxi, Mississippi; New Orleans; San Antonio; LA (which Bob promptly renamed Lost Endlessness); and San Francisco. It was there that the Volksbus was laboring up a typically steep hill, when a terrific clanging rang out from above. From the driver’s seat, Bob looked ahead up the street and noticed a cable car approaching, with its conductor frantically waving his arm and ringing the bell. In fact, it was coming down the hill in the wrong direction for this lane of traffic, and a bit too fast as well. Suddenly, Bob realized that the conductor was waving him out of the way. But there wasn’t enough room on the right. So Bob made a snap decision and veered into the left lane, to let that cable car rush past in just the nick of time. It turned out that the cable car had lost its grip on its cable, and could neither go forward up the hill, nor brake to keep from falling back. Bob recorded this traumatically hilarious event in a journal that he was keeping about their pilgrimage.
Onward he drove up the west coast, still without a plan, but considering the notion of a return to college. Stopping along the way to pick up catalogs and applications at various universities, the family began to focus on the Northwest as a destination, due to its lush greenery, and its ready access to both the ocean and the mountains. Northern California is sometimes considered a part of the Northwest, and the Shepards wanted to explore some options in that direction. So one day they found themselves headed south on Highway 101. They crossed the California border, and something felt different. But they forged ahead regardless, past the dozens of lumber mills that once thrived in this region. In those days, green lumber was cured in large cone-shaped sheet metal structures known as wig-wam burners. These rusty marvels of industrial engineering billowed enormous plumes of sooty smoke, and dotted the landscape from here to British Columbia. But the wig-wam burners on this stretch of the road seemed to be more noxious and more numerous than elsewhere. So just a few miles south of Eureka, while choking on the worst cloud of smoke yet, the Shepard family unanimously agreed to immediately turn around and go back to Oregon.
Bob enrolled at the University of Oregon, and the Shepards rented a modest little house in Eugene. They continued to camp and hike and explore the region, especially the fascinating beaches and coastal areas. Bob took any jobs he could get through the temp agencies, and even put on a hard hat to work on installing a giant oven for a convenience food factory. Marj, meanwhile, went to school briefly to obtain her Oregon teaching certificate, and then landed a job as a music teacher at Clear Lake Elementary School.
In the late 60s, the political atmosphere in numerous university towns across America was extremely exciting. And Unitarian churches, such as the one in Eugene which the Shepards had joined, tended to be hotbeds of liberal thought. So the utopian optimism the Shepards had sensed at Expo ‘67 seemed to persist in the peace marches and Vietnam protests which rallied at the U of O in those years. Although Bob was quite a bit older than the other students, he had experience with non-violent action at various Civil Rights marches, and he avidly took part in these new demonstrations. His fellow students tried their best to convert this beatnik jazz freak daddio into a granola crunching rock and roll hippie, and they almost succeeded when he brought home a copy of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. He declared it to be on a par with classical music, and immediately purchased a stereo system to hear it properly. But despite his increasing hipness, Bob could not settle on a major for his academic career.
Money was scarce. Bob tried selling Amway products from door to door for a while. He roto-tilled the back yard and the family started a garden. They drove out to farms to get deals on u-pick fruits and vegetables, and learned how to can and freeze them. From the pages of Mother Earth News, Marj learned how to make home made soap. The pioneer adventure persisted.
And then one day, an academic advisor by the name of Barbara Nichols took Bob Shepard aside and brought up his enthusiasm for books, and his insight into their meanings. He was an Anthropology major at the time, for no particular reason. But it was true, he had always enjoyed his lit classes the most. Barbara urged him to get a degree in English. After some consideration, he changed his major to English; became well acquainted with Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucer, Faulkner and such; and befriended the entire U of O English department. He became a Graduate Teaching Fellow, and commenced work on his Master’s degree. In 1971, he put on his mortar board and took his diploma. Then Marj typed up his resume, the kids licked several hundred stamps, and Bob sent out applications to teach at just about any college west of the Mississippi. Mt. Hood and Fresno State both expressed some interest. But there was also a town on the Oregon coast called Coos Bay, where there was a little college known as SWOCC. The interview at SWOCC seemed to go pretty well. And soon after, the family had to decide their fate once more. But again, the decision was unanimous, because the Oregon coast was their favorite place among all the wonders they had seen on their travels.
Bob Shepard taught literature and writing at SWOCC from 1971 until 1994. He instigated and designed the curriculum for a class on William Faulkner, and a class on the Literature of Oregon. He took a turn for a spell at running the weekly campus film screening, known as The Rhubarb Film Festival. The information and photographs that he captured on his two sabbatical journeys, to Europe and to Mexico, enriched his lectures and class discussion.
Marj established a piano studio and taught private lessons. And the boys were active in the school band and theater. Don was involved on the track team, and was becoming a self-taught bicycle mechanic. And young Bob was interested in writing. The family continued their camping adventures, exploring the redwood forests, Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, and the Canadian Rockies. Once they backpacked for three days in the footsteps of John Muir through the alpine meadows of Yosemite. But eventually the boys graduated from high school, and wandered off on adventures of their own. Meanwhile, Bob and Marj took the world by storm, and over the years were spotted in museums and restaurants from Morocco to Thailand, from China to Oaxaca. On the home front, Bob and Marj took up bicycling for fun and health.Shortly after his retirement, Bob suffered a devastating stroke, which affected his speech center, as well as the right side of his body. Over time, with sheer zeal and determination, he somehow rewired his brain to regain the language skills that he valued so dearly. However, difficulties with mobility put a damper on his hopes to see more of the world. Yet he continued to explore the world through music, food, wine, films, and books for the rest of his life.
The final days came swiftly, with barely enough time for the family to assemble in his hospital room. A number of his organs and systems were failing simultaneously, including his brain. So his ablility to communicate was declining with each passing day. As a result, his final words are a bit indeterminate. But perhaps his most final and distinct utterance was delivered when his sons Robert and Don, and his wife Marj, read aloud to him at his bedside. Robert read a passage by John Muir, Don read a poem by family friend and colleague Erik Muller, and Marj read a section from the journal of the family’s epic journey in 1967. She chose the description of San Francisco. When she came to the story about the runaway cable car, an utterly charmed and delighted Bob burst out with “Ding ding ding ding ding!”
Even with these repeated, monosyllabic, onomatopoetic words - like block letters exploding from the pages of a comic book - nothing could more eloquently sum up the man’s heroics in the face of preposterous circumstance, his humorous approach to nostalgia, or his love of words.
Robert Carlton Shepard
Born: 20 Dec 1933 Akron, Summit, OH
Married: 9 Jun 1956 Akron, Summit, OH
Died: 19 Aug 2014 Coos Bay, Coos, OR
Sources: Federal Census Records of 1920-1940; Birth, Marriage, and Death Certificates. Discharge from Marine Reserves; Diplomas from Garfield High School in Akron, Summit, OH and University of Oregon in Eugene, Lane, OR Travel journals written by Robert C, Shepard, The personal memories of his sons and spouse.
