Jim Croce—The Sudden Death of an Accidental Superstar

 

Classic Jim Croce--a working class Joe.

Jim Croce looked like a truck driver who had lost one too many bar fights.  And indeed, he had been a truck driver, a welder, and construction worker in his life.  Yet in his brief career he became an acclaimed singer/song writer whose songs went head to head in the charts with the likes of James Taylor.  Croce died in a plane crash on September 20, 1973 in Natchitoches, Louisiana.  He was just 30 years old and had released only two albums as a single act—records that produced two #1 hits and numerous memorable tracks.

Croce was born in South Philadelphia on January 10, 1943.  He was an indifferent student with a mild interest in music.  He played the accordion.  Mostly he goofed off.  After moving to middle class Drexel Hill, he graduated without distinction from Upper Darby High School.  He worked construction for three years before enrolling in Villanova University in 1964. 

There he rediscovered music.  He sang in the glee club and men’s a cappella group, did a turn as a college disc jockey, played in various pick-up bands, and started singing at local coffee houses as a single.  He hadn’t settled on a style yet, playing covers of rock, blues, and folk hits, “anything the people wanted to hear,” he later said.  One group he sang with got picked to go on a foreign exchange tour of Africa and the Middle East.

Croce with fellow folk singer and wife Ingrid Jacobson and their infant son A.J.

Back in the States Croce met and married folk singer Ingrid Jacobson.  He converted to her Jewish faith and the two soon hit the road as a duo covering the work of the popular icons of the Folk Revival.  They began introducing original material—Jim’s surprisingly reflective and tender love songs and more raucous crowd pleasers.

In 1968 the duo recorded Jim & Ingrid Croce for Columbia Records and spent two years touring small clubs in support of the record, which got excellent reviews, but generated few sales.

Reduced to selling most of their instruments, Croce decided it was time to settle down.  He went back to work as a truck driver and even enlisted for a short and unsuccessful hitch as a soldier.

In 1970 producer Joe Salviuolo teamed Croce up with another folk performer, classically trained Maury Muehleisen.  Initially Croce played backup guitar for Muehleisen, but soon their roles were reversed.  The accomplished guitarist gave new richness and texture to Croce’s growing repertoire of original music. 

 

Croce with his guitarist and touring partner Maury Muehleisen whose accompaniment was a huge part of his sound.

In 1972 ABC Records signed Croce to a three record deal with Muehleisen as his back up.  Two albums, You Don’t Mess Around with Jim and Life & Times were released the same year.  Both were enormous hits featuring songs like You Don’t Mess Around with Jim, Operator, Time in a Bottle, and Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.  Croce was suddenly star.

In early September 1973 Croce and Muehleisen wrapped up a third album, I Got a Name and then resumed their busy tour schedule.  

 

The single of Time in a Bottle, a big hit off Croce's debut ABC album You Don't Mess Around with Jim. 

On September 20 after finishing a concert at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches Croce, Mueheleisen, their opening act, comic George Stevens, their road manager Kenneth D. Cortose, and another passenger boarded a twin engine Beechcraft for a short flight to another college booking in Sherman, Texas.  Despite ideal flying conditions pilot Robert Newton Elliott somehow failed to gain enough altitude on takeoff to clear a line of trees at the end of the runway.  All aboard the plane were killed in the crash.

Croce was just 30 years old when he joined the list of music stars killed in a small plane crash.

In the wake of his unexpected death, sales of Croce’s first two albums took off anew and Time in a Bottle from the first album was released as a single becoming a posthumous #1 hit.  The final album was also released posthumously and besides the title tract contained Workin’ at the Car Wash Blues, and I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song. In 1974 a greatest hits compilation, Photographs & Memories became a sensation.  

Since his death several other posthumous albums have been released, and his 1968 Capital album with his wife was re-released.  His songs have become radio standards still played in several formats.  Croce was inducted into the Song Writer’s Hall of Fame in 1990.

His widow Ingrid opened the successful Croce’s Restaurant & Jazz Bar in San Diego in 1984.   In 2014, she closed the downtown business and re-opened in Bankers Hill as Croce’s Park West with dining, bar and terrace areas, and a large room at the back for live music. That business model turned out not to be viable, and the restaurant closed two years later. Their son, A.J. Croce, who was just two years old when his father died, has become a singer and songwriter himself with several records to his credit.  Croce wrote Time in a Bottle for A.J. before his birth. 

Together mother and son collaborated on the DVD Have You Heard Jim Croce Live, with an album of the same name; the album Jim Croce, Home Recordings, Americana, and a re-issue of Facets, his rare self-issued 1966 album.

Breaking Free—Bessie Coleman, Aviatrix Against the Odds

Bessie Coleman was both the first Black and first Native American woman to win pilot wings.

Bessie Coleman seemed destined by birth to remain earthbound, poor, and obscure when she was born on January 26, 1892 as the 10th of 14 children of sharecroppers near Atlanta, Texas.  Her father was an enrolled member of the Cherokee tribe in Indian Territory just across the border to the north. Her mother was Black. In search of better prospects the family soon moved to Waxahachie south of Dallas where the girl spent most of her childhood and teen years.

When she was 9 her father abandoned the family to return to tribal lands in Oklahoma leaving her impoverished family to struggle.  Despite all obstacles, including having to walk four miles each day to an inferior and segregated one room school, Bessie showed herself to be an eager student who excelled at reading and enjoyed math.  She was also dedicated to the family’s Missionary Baptist Church. 

Every year her schooling was interrupted to pick cotton with the rest of her family.   Her mother let Bessie keep part of her earnings from the harvest which she saved so that at age 18 she was able to enroll at the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University at Langston, Oklahoma.   She had to drop out of school after just one semester when her savings ran out.  Back in Waxahachie she found some work in local beauty shops and returned to the cotton fields every year.

But Coleman was ambitious to escape the life that loomed ahead of her—inevitable marriage to another sharecropper, repeated childbirth, and endless drudgery.  In 1916 she left Waxachachie behind forever at the age of 23 to join a brother who had joined the Great Migration to Chicago.  In the city she found work as a manicurist at the White Sox Barbershop.  Pretty, personable, and smart, she attracted the attention and support of some of her clients.

They included a cream of the Chicago Black elite, including after the end of the Great War in 1918, Black veterans including some pioneering military pilots.  Entranced by their stories, Coleman decided she wanted to fly, too.

But the obstacles once again seemed overwhelming.  No American flight schools would train Blacks and she knew of none that would teach women.  Even the Black pilots she had met declined to teach her.  Her only option was to go to France where they had all trained.  With luck her manicure customers and admirers included Robert S. Abbott, founder and publisher of the Chicago Defender, America’s premier Black owned newspaper, and banker Jesse Binga who bankrolled her trip to France.

In preparation for her adventure Coleman took crash course in French at the Chicago Berlitz School.  

Coleman's International Pilot's License.

Coleman arrived in Paris in November of 1920.  As she expected, she was allowed to enroll in a French flying school with no difficulty and was soon learning in a primitive Nieuport Type 82 biplane.  She was a quick learner.  On June 15, 1921 she became simultaneously the first Black woman and the first Native American woman to be granted an International Pilot’s License from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.  Not content with that achievement she stayed for two more months in France to hone her skills and log time in the air under the advanced tutelage of from a former French ace.

Thanks to hoopla stirred up by her sponsor at the Defender, Coleman found herself a minor celebrity when she came ashore in New York that September.  Hailed as the “dusky queen of the air,” she almost immediately launched a national speaking tour hoping to raise money for her own aircraft.

While on tour she met the Rev. Hezakiah Hill of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Black Parramore neighborhood of Orlando, Florida and his wife Viola.  The couple offered Coleman a home in the church parsonage and became surrogate parents to her.  It would become the anchor of her life in the frequent wanderings of the rest of her life.  She even opened her own beauty shop to finance her flying.  

Coleman designed her own pilot uniform for her lecture tours.

The lecture circuit was only a stop-gap to Coleman’s goal of becoming a full-time professional pilot.  Two of the avenues of employment were barred to her—military service or becoming an airmail pilot.  Her only hope was to become a barnstorming pilot.  But that would require her to further sharpen her skills as a stunt pilot.  

In February 1922 she returned to Paris for two more months of advanced stunt flying instruction from a French ace.  Then she traveled to the Netherlands to meet legendary aircraft designer Anthony Fokker who was so impressed with her that he sent her on to his airplane factories in Germany where she received further instruction from his top test pilots.  By the time she sailed for home Coleman was probably the best trained female pilot yet.

Coleman with a monoplane on her return to France to study stunt flying with former French aces.

When she returned to New York to a new round of press attention, Abbot and the Defender sponsored her appearance at a special air show at Curtis Field on Long Island on September 3, 1922 in honor of World War I veterans of the all-Black 369th Infantry Regiment.  A few weeks after that auspicious debut, she headlined a special air show at Chicago’s Checkerboard Field, now Midway Airport.

She flew at first in mostly rented or borrowed Curtis JN-4 “Jenny” biplanes, the slow and lumbering staple of barnstormers.

Coleman with one of the rented or borrowed Curtis Jenny bi-planes that she used for her barnstorming appearances.  Despite being inexpensive mainstays of the barnstorming circuit, the planes were slow, lumbering, and fragile. .  

Coleman had a very successful barnstorming career for the next five years.  She was an expert in self-promotion, not hesitating to use either her good looks or outsized vivacious personality to charm even hostile reporters.  She broke into mainstream white press and was profiled in magazine cover stories and featured in newsreels.

She snapped up an opportunity to star in her own feature film financed by the African American Seminole Film Producing Company.  But her high hopes for the movie Shadow and Sunshine were dashed on the first day of shooting when she was handed as script with an opening scene of her dressed in tatters and barefoot walking down a road with a knapsack.  Coleman who even as a sharecropper’s daughter was at pains to be as clean and stylish as she could, was deeply offended by the depiction which played to all of the racial stereotypes promoted by the White culture.  She walked off the set and turned her back on the promise of movie stardom.

Coleman hoped to give up barnstorming and open her own flight school for young Blacks of both sexes.  She had hoped the film would finance that plan.  Without it she resigned herself to another season or two of touring to raise the money she needed.

In April of 1926 Coleman purchased a new—for her—Jenny bi-plane in Dallas.  She dispatched her trusted mechanic, 24 year old William D. Willis to pick up the plane and fly it to meet her in Jacksonville, Florida. Willis found that the well used Jenny was in poor condition.  In fact he made three forced landings on the flight to Florida.  He urged Coleman not to use the plane until he had time to give it a complete overhaul.  But Coleman had a contract to perform on May 1 and did not have time for that.  Instead she had Willis take her up for a trial flight on April 30 to familiarize herself with the plane.  Because the scheduled performance included her making a parachute jump from the plane, she was in the observer’s seat and Willis at the controls.  For some reason Coleman was not strapped into her seat.

The publisher of the Chicago Defender had helped finance Coleman's flying lessons in France and had heavily promoted her ever since.  He death was a banner headline in America's most influential Black newspaper.  The local Jacksonville press couldn't even be bothered to mention her name in their coverage.

Ten minutes after takeoff at an altitude of 2000 feet the plane shuddered, lurched, and then rolled over into an uncontrolled dive.  Coleman was thrown from her seat and fell to her instant death.  Willis could not regain control of the aircraft and died in a fiery crash. It was determined that a loose wrench slid into the gearbox.  

Dead at just 34 years of age, Coleman shared the fate of many pioneering flyers.   Aviation was still a dangerous business.  She was widely mourned, but quickly forgotten outside the Black community as Jazz Age White America quickly turned its attention to the next shiny object.

World War I veteran Lt. William J. Powell, a former infantry officer who dreamed of becoming a flyer was inspired by Coleman.  Shortly after getting his own pilot’s license Powell formed the Bessie Coleman Aero Club to promote Black aviation in 1929 and commemorated her in his 1934 book, Black Wings.

Coleman was honored with a 1995 stamp in the Black Heritage series by the United States Postal Service.

Coleman was re-discovered by a wider audience with the rising interest in Black History.  She has been honored by roads named for her at Chicago’s O’Hare and three other airports around the world.  The street in front of her Tampa parsonage home has also been re-named for her and the site of the house on Chicago’s South Side where she lived with her brother has been plaqued by the Chicago Cultural Center.  The United States Post Office honored her with a first class stamp in its Black Heritage series in 1995.  And in 2006 Coleman was belatedly inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Harriet Quimby—First Pioneer Aviatrix

Harriet Quimby in a Blériot one-seat monoplane.

Harriet Quimby was one of a kind—actress, journalist, screenwriter, pioneer aviatrix, barnstormer before there was a word for it, and a colorful, defiant independent woman with a dash of style.  She was Nellie Bly crossed with Amelia Earhart, and a dash of the self-promoting feminist pioneer Victoria Claffin Woodhull thrown in for good measure.

Quimby was born to a farm family in Arcadia, Michigan on May 11, 1875. Twelve years later she relocated to the San Francisco Bay area in California.  Little is known of her early life as she purposefully tried to obscure it.  She would later claim that she had been born to a wealthy family in Arroyo Grande, California on May 1, 1884—not the last time she would re-invent herself.

Quimby was a remarkably attractive woman and knew how to use her charms to her advantage.

1900 found 25 year old Quimby listed in the Census for San Francisco as an actress living alone.  No credits for any theater roles have ever been found, but in those days the term was often used for the dancers in waterfront dives many of whom doubled as prostitutes—not that there is any proof that she did that, either.  She was a remarkably attractive woman with almost black hair, expressive eyes, and evidently quite charming.  Her most apparent source of income was as a writer, contributing short pieces and reviews to Bay Area publications. 

In 1903 with clippings of those pieces in hand, and boasting of her experience as an “actress” Quimby crossed the continent to New York City, waltzed into the offices of Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly, a popular women’s magazine and charmed her way into a job.  She was put on as theater critic but was soon reviewing entertainments of all sorts, including the infant films being shown in Nickelodeons.  

Quimby worked as a script writer and actress at D.W. Griffith's Biograph studio in the Bronx.

As the films became more sophisticated, so did her interest. Through an old friend from San Francisco, actress Linda Advinson, Quimby got to know her husband, pioneer director D.W. Griffith.   He was impressed enough by her to hire her as a screen writer for Biograph Pictures.  She wrote seven film shorts for him, featuring early Biograph stars Florence La Badie, Wilfred Lucas, and Blanche Sweet which were filmed at the company’s Bronx studio.   She appeared in one the films that were made between 1910 and 1912 and perhaps was uncredited in others.  Most of these are lost films.

In addition to her reviews, Quimby sought out new assignments from the magazine.  She wrote articles on how women could be independent—auto repairs, career tips, and tips on running a household without being a slave.  She taught herself photography, an important skill for the highly illustrated magazine and wrangled assignments in to Europe, Mexico, Cuba, and Egypt.

All the while she remained an independent woman.  She never married or became dependent on a man.  At a time when it was still scandalous, she drove her own car, smoked, and traveled the world unescorted.  This is not to say that as an attractive woman she did not attract attention and welcome it as long as no strings were attached.  She was making a decent living and enjoying the modicum of celebrity that came with being a prolific writer.

Quimby, left, with Matilde Moisant, her friend and aviation rival.  Although Moisant began flying earlier under the instruction of her brother, Quimby passed her by to become the first American woman liscenced by the International Aeuronautic Federation.

A magazine assignment in October of 1910 changed Quimby’s life.  She set out to photograph the Belmont Park International Aviation Tournament on Long Island, and met John Moisant, a well-known aviator and operator of a flight school, and his sister Matilde.  She was immediately smitten with aviation and convinced Moisant to take her on as a student, joining Matilde who had already done some flying.  Since the Moisants were French, she was taught in a Blériot monoplane instead of the rickety Wright or Curtis bi-planes flown by most American pilots. The lessons continued under Moisant’s brother Alfred when John was killed in a crash. Quimby was a quick study—and perhaps a little competitive.  

Somehow word of her training “leaked” to the press—three guesses on the suspected leaker—creating a flurry of publicity.  Quimby began to write about her experiences.  On August 1, 1911she somehow leaped over Matilde and was granted License #37 from Aero Club of America, the U.S. affiliate of the International Aeuronautic Federation which granted international pilot’s licenses. That made her the first American woman licensed as a pilot and the second woman in the world behind the Baroness de la Roche in France.  Matilde Moisant, who may have been a little miffed at having been run around, soon became the second female American pilot.

Quimby aloft in a Bleriot monoplane at an air show.

With the considerable publicity surrounding her training and obtaining a license, Quimby decided to launch a tour “exhibiting myself” and her flying across the U.S. and into Mexico.  Crowds clamored to see the beautiful and glamourous aviatrix.  And she knew how to charm them.  Quimby designed her own unique flying outfit, plum-colored wool-backed satin, with a cowl hood that was tailored enough to show off her curves.  Not for her either aping the gear of male flyers or going up, as some early women pilots had, in impractical voluminous skirts.  At each stop she made herself available to the press and could always be counted on for a clever quote.

Quimby in her signature plum colored flying suit in a promotional poster.

Despite her success Quimby knew that to achieve real respect as a pilot and be more than simply a novelty, she had to establish some sort of flying record.  She set her sights on being the first woman to fly across the English Channel.  When Miss Trehawke-Davis flew across as a passenger, she knew it was only a matter of time before some European female flyer would attempt to pilot the crossing.

With unaccustomed secrecy, lest word of her coming spur others to make the trip first, Quimby sailed to England.  Once there she talked Louis Blériot, who was the first person to fly across the Channel in 1909, to loan her one of famous monoplanes.

On April 16, 1912 Quimby took off from Dover, flying roughly the same route as Blériot but in reverse she set out for Calais.  There was a heavy overcast over the Channel that day and she had to navigate solely by compass.  It took her 59 minutes to make the crossing in her 50 horsepower plane.  She came safely to earth 25 miles south of Calais on a beach at Hardelot-Plage with hardly a drop of fuel left.  She had won her treasured record.

If the sinking of the Titanic initially kept her achievement off the front pages, the Salt Lake Tribune took notice a month and a half later.  Two guesses who provided the pictures for this and other American publicity.

She did not attract quite all of the hoopla that ordinarily surrounded such early aviation feats because of a sad accident of the calendar.  Her flight took place the day after the Titanic sank when papers on both sides of the Atlantic were dedicated almost exclusively to the tragedy and would remain so for days.  All Quimby’s accomplishment could muster were articles buried deep in most newspaper pages.

Still, by spring of 1912 Quimby was one of the most famous women in America.  When pilot Calbraith Perry Rodgers was killed in an April crash of his plane, the Vin Fiz J. Ogden Armour of the meatpacking family hired Quimby and her fortuitously purple suit to endorse his brand of grape soda.  She was featured in color posters in drug store soda fountains and in a magazine advertising campaign.

Quimby as featured in a store promotion for Vin Fiz.

Upon arrival back in the states and with the sponsorship of Vin Fiz Quimby launched herself in a new and lucrative tour of the now popular air meets, rallies, and exhibitions popping up all around the country.

On July 1, 1912 Quimby flew in the Third Annual Boston Aviation Meet at Squantum, Massachusetts, an event unsanctioned by the Aero Club of America which could technically have cost her license.  But the appearance fee was handsome and Quimby was glad to lend a hand in promoting the event.  Early in the day she took off with show manager William Willard as a passenger in her new two-seat Bleriot monoplane for the benefit of the press.  Rising to an altitude of about 3,000 feet she flew out to Boston Light in Boston Harbor then returned and circled the airfield where a good size crowd was now in attendance.

Then suddenly as the plane descended to about 1,500 feet it suddenly shuddered and pitched forward tumbling Willard out of his seat and to his death.  Seconds later Quimby fell after him.  The plane itself recovered from whatever had happened and continued to fly, gliding down to what would have been a survivable landing.  Her career as a pilot ended with her death only 9 months after it had begun.

Quimby's body was recovered in shallow water after falling from her plane.

The cause of the sudden lurch remains one of aviation’s great mysteries.  Some conjecture that a cable supporting the wing may have snapped and fouled the engine.  Others think that Willard, a rather large man, may have suddenly shifted his weight in his seat unbalancing the aircraft.  Almost all agree that if the pilot and passenger had been strapped into their seats, they would not have fallen out and most likely have walked away from a hard landing.

She was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, and then was moved to Kenisco Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.

But fame is fleeting and hers faded from memory.  She was most celebrated back in her home state of Michigan—the place she felt she had escaped from and actually denied.  A historic marker stands in front of the abandoned family home in Arcadia and another in the southern Michigan town of Coldwater.  Her grave in Valhalla is graced with a bronze plaque with a reproduction of her monoplane and a description of her life and achievement.  Perhaps her greatest memorial was the inspiration to other female pilots—especially Amelia Earhart who idolized her as a girl.

Quimby as memorialized by the Postal Service in 1991

Interest Quimby has lately revived.  In 1991 she was pictured in what is surely the only glamor shot on an airmail stamp honoring pioneer aviators by the by the United State Postal Service.  In 2012 she was inducted into the Long Island Air and Space Hall of Fame.  She was the subject of a biography by Giacinta Bradley Koontz which also included numerous photographs, press clippings, and memorabilia recently discovered. A descendent company of Biograph Pictures, the company she worked for with D. W. Griffith, was said to be in development of a bio pic with Donnamarie Recco in the title role in 2014,

Claims were made the wreckage plane the Quimby died piloting was found, discovered in a New Hampshire barn during the 1960’s.  The aircraft has been meticulously restored to flying condition and is on display at Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, an aviation museum in Red Hook, New York.  The plane is the second oldest in existence still airworthy.  But the plane is one-seater Blériot XI, which bears the Blériot factory’s serial number 56, showing that it was manufactured in 1909. Since Quimby’s plane, in 1912, was a brand new two-seater, it could not have been Quimby’s.

Rob Sherman—The Atheist Who Fell Out of the Sky

Rob Sherman and his wife Celeste in his Zenair Zodiac CH-601 XL in happier days.

The announcement was made late yesterday afternoon.  The pilot who died when his small private plane smashed into a field of snow corn stubble on Saturday near Marengo, Illinois just a few miles from me was Rob Sherman.  That may not mean much to you unless you are a news junkie with a good memory from the Chicago area or have an active interest in religion and civil liberties.  Sherman, the self-described Illinois’ most prominent atheist, was a long-time activist, agitator, crusader, politician, and public pain-the-ass who was widely publicly reviled.  Oftentimes the best that the press could call him was a gadfly, the universal dismissive adjective for public cranks and nuisances.  This Sunday there are preachers in McHenry County—I can probably name them—who will gleefully boas that God smote the Devil.

The 63 year old Sherman was a successful North Suburban businessman who was raised in a Jewish family who learned Hebrew and could speak Yiddish but became a passionate atheist at an early age. In horror is parents placed him in a psychiatric institution for two years.  The experience only hardened his resolve. He joined and rose in the ranks of American Atheists, the organization founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair as the Society of Separationists in 1963.  Like O’Hair, Sherman employed the courts in battles to keep religion from being imposed or sponsored by government and in defense of the civil rights of non-believers.  He made his mark in landmark litigation that changed national law.

Well spoken, calm, and intensely intelligent Sherman made a perfect public face and voice for the movement.  Unlike O’Hair herself or the new generation of often belligerent atheist activists and writers whose main interest seems to be heaping scorn and savage ridicule on believers, Sherman was less likely to challenge individual faith than to oppose the quiet but real oppression of official and semi-official state sponsorship of religion.

Sherman successfully sued the City of Zion for use of this seal in his first high profile case.

Sherman first rose to prominence in 1987 when he challenged the Lake County city of Zion, which had been founded as a religious colony, for using the Christian symbols of a cross, dove, and a crown with a banner reading God Reigns in the city seal and on official documents, signage, buildings, and equipment.  Litigation dragged on for years while Zion official rallied public support for their cause and vilified Sherman at every turn.  Sherman received innumerable death threats and literally risked his life when he made appearances at City Council meetings or other local events.  Later he also sued the Cook County municipality of Rolling Meadows over similar issues.

The case drew national attention and Sherman’s face was seen on network news shows and on Oprah Winfrey’s show and other programs.  Newspapers, magazines, and pundits weighted in for or against his campaign—mostly against.

At the cost of hundreds of thousands of tax payer dollars, Zion lost round after round in the courts until the Supreme Court allowed the lower court ruling to stand, and both towns were ordered to drop the religious symbols.  The case has been cited as precedent in numerous other cases around the country in years since.

Sherman’s activism became a family affair when his children faced discrimination for their lack of religious belief.  In 1997, Sherman’s 15 year old son Richard sued the Boy Scouts of America for denying him membership because he refused to profess a faith in God.  The case was closely followed by Unitarian Universalists who found that their own boys were banned from membership if they took a similar stand as explicitly allowed by the UUA scouting organization.  As a result Sherman and his son frequently spoke to UU churches and events.

Although the Sherman’s argued that the BSA’s unique Congressional Charter gave the organization quasi-official status, the courts eventually ruled that it was essentially a private club which could set its membership requirements as it saw fit.  When the UUA finally resolved its dispute with the BSA last year because the organization essentially dropped its ban on homosexual boys and leaders without addressing the issues of a religious test Sherman expressed disappointment.

The long battle over the Scouts took an odd turn in 1999 when Sherman was accused of slapping his son, convicted of misdemeanor battery, and sentenced to two years of conditional discharge, a court supervision included counseling.  Many suspected excessive and selective prosecution in the case to embarrass the activist.  Similar minor incidents involving a parent and older teen without an established pattern of abuse are almost never prosecuted in Cook County.

In 2007, Sherman and his 14-year-old daughter Dawn, a freshman at Buffalo Grove High School, sued Township High School District 214 over  a new state law mandating a moment of “silent prayer or silent reflection” at the start of classes. Two years later, a Federal judge overturned the law ruling that it amounted to an unconstitutional endorsement of religion intended to bring prayer into public schools.  On appeal the decision was reversed on the grounds that the was no harm in silence, which could be implemented for a practical purpose in calming students at the start of classes.  Despite the loss, the case slowed or deterred other states from drafting similar legislation.

Sherman challenging a Nativity Scene set up in a park in his home town of Buffalo Grove.  He was never afraid to be unpopular.

In addition to his court cases, Sherman was the go-to-guy for comment on a range of issues including public nativity displays at Christmas, prayer at public meetings and at public school sports events, enforced recital of the Pledge of Allegiance with the “under God” phrase inserted during the ‘50’s Red Scare, and the continued use of the motto “In God We Trust” on U.S. coins and currency.  He often sparked sputtering public outrage like when he tried to stop prayer at a 9/11 memorial at Daley Plaza in Chicago.  He not only shrugged off the hatred directed toward him, but wore it as a badge of honor. 

He authored many op-eds and longer journal articles.  Sherman hosted a morning drive talk show on the former WJJG AM 1530, a DuPage County based station.

Sherman regularly monitored meetings of all levels of government.  He regularly ran for office including stabs at local office including school board, township government, city clerk and State Representative from his long-time home in Buffalo Grove. He was routinely drubbed and smeared as a Communist although he called himself a “Constitution thumping capitalist.  He was Cook County Green Party Chair in 2012.  His last run ended in November when he ran as the Green Party candidate for the Illinois 5th Congressional District.  

Earlier this year with his "In Rob we Trust" penny logo on his campaign t-shirt, Sherman posed with Green Party Presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein.

Sherman lived through the rise of the Religious Right and witnessed its dwindling influence as the so-called Nones—those with no religious affiliation—including atheists, agnostics, skeptics, and humanists became larger in numbers than the adherents of any religious faith.  Despite this he knew that atheist remained the most despised and mistrusted minority in America in poll after poll.  The election of their libertine-ally-of-convenience Donald Trump has re-energized to most rabid elements of the Christian Right and Sherman was gearing up for new battles.

But activism was not Sherman’s only passion.  He was also a longtime pilot and enthusiastic member and was a former local chapter President of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA).  After he retired from his long-time office supply business, he started new business building light sport aircraft to special order.

Last Friday Sherman took off from the strip by his new home in an aviation subdivision by Poplar Grove Airport for a short flight to attend an EAA Holiday Party in Schaumburg.  He never made it.  A passerby noticed the crumpled aircraft in the field the next morning.  Buy Sunday authorities identified the plane as belonging to Sherman but did not get a positive identification of the only body on board until yesterday.

Sherman was flying his beloved Zenair Zodiac CH-601 XL, a low wing flying coupe.  Sold in both ready-to-build-kits and factory assembled, Sherman’s plane was purchased fully manufactured.  It was the flying equivalent of an old MG sports car—totally impractical but fun, zippy, and a little sexy.  Sherman even had it painted a bright red.

After the Zodiac model was involved in six crashes resulting in 10 fatalities the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)  issuing an urgent safety recommendation to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), asking the agency to ground the plane until the flight control issues were resolved.  The FAA declined but after another deadly crash in 2009 ordered owners and operators of Zodiac CH-601XL aircraft to comply with a safety directive from the manufacturer.  Manufactured planes like Sherman’s were effectively grounded until modifications were made.  Presumably Sherman’s plane was in full compliance.

The NTSB is expected to announce preliminary results of its crash investigation next week.

 

Sherman and his family in 2010 on an Illinois River cruise--Richard, Dawn, and Celeste.

Sherman is survived by his wife of 36 years Celeste and now adult children Richard and Dawn who continued to support their father’s activism.  As of this writing, not funeral or memorial arrangements have been announced.