Keith Shelton (1932-2024)

 

Keith Shelton, right, and C.E. "Papa" Shuford look over The North Texas Daily on the day it changed its name from the The Campus Chat.

The man who made me a journalist

Tomorrow, I will drive a few miles up I-35W to Denton to attend a memorial service for a great man – a mentor and friend, and the person who helped mold me into the journalist I became and the person I am.

Keith Shelton, journalist and teacher, died earlier this month at the grand age of 92 – his mind still clear, his humor intact, his keen interest in the world around him still active.

And while his passing is being mourned by his former students, his friends and his family, Keith’s memory and the impact he had on several generations of journalists at the University of North Texas will live on.

If we’re lucky, most of us can come up half-dozen or so people who have had a profound influence on our lives.  Our parents, of course. Perhaps our grandparents. But that list almost certainly will include teachers. Those dedicated educators who guided us, who influenced us, who helped us find our way in the world.

For me, Keith Shelton was one of those people.

He was the first person with whom I had contact at UNT.

After graduating from a cowboy junior college in my hometown, I was having trouble deciding where to finish my studies. Then I had a chance encounter in the parking lot with the publisher of the Big Spring Herald, where I had a summer job.

“Where are you going to college?” he asked me.

“I’m not sure,” I stammered.

“Quit farting around,” he barked. “Go to North Texas State. It’s got a great journalism program and a damned good student newspaper. You can’t go wrong there.”

Keith Shelton on the day he was honored by the university he served so well for 23 years.

So I composed a letter to the chairman of the NT journalism department and asked about the possibilities of working on the student newspaper. I noted hopefully that I had been the editor of both my high school and junior college newspapers.

The great C.E. “Papa” Shuford, the founding chairman of the J-department, was on vacation. So Keith Shelton answered my letter.

He was courteous, but direct. There were no guarantees about working on The North Texas Daily, he wrote. It would depend entirely on how I performed – both in the classroom and with my fellow students. He welcomed my choice to attend NTSU and said he looked forward to seeing me on campus.

It was straight-forward and uncompromising – not exactly the welcoming embrace I hoped for. I was being served notice. I was on the brink of a great adventure, and Keith Shelton was welcoming me to take the leap.

And I did.

When I met Keith, it was a surprise. He was not the commanding figure I had envisioned. Instead, I met a short, balding man with a neat mustache, a tight smile and a large – make that huge – left ear.

Keith has written candidly about the birth defect that impacted his life and career, so I won’t shy away from it here. It was his most distinguishing feature. But one that was never – and I mean, never – mentioned in his presence.

In all the years that I knew Keith, the subject never came up. The force of his personality, the strength of his character, the overwhelming respect he enjoyed from both students and colleagues soon erased its significance.

In a few short days, I no longer had to remind myself not to stare at it. Jokes about the “big ear” were not tolerated.

After a single semester, I was chosen to join the Daily staff. I credit my success in large part to Keith’s quiet influence. Although he had no direct voice in the selection, his approval was all-important to the editor who did.

It changed my life, making my long career in journalism both possible – and inevitable.

Truth be told, Keith Shelton was not a great classroom lecturer. Frankly, I don’t remember a single thing he ever uttered in the classroom. But I don’t have a single memory of the time I spent at UNT – known then as North Texas State University – in which he doesn’t play a prominent role.

All his students knew of his professional credentials. He was a former chief political correspondent for the Dallas Times Herald, and, famously, had traveled in the motorcade in which JFK was assassinated.

He was the first journalist to interview Gov. John Connally, who had been in the limo when JFK was hit and had been wounded by the bullet that killed the president.

He wrote a heralded account of former U.S. House Speaker Sam Rayburn’s funeral and accumulated a formidable number of awards for his reporting.

In the autobiography he wrote shortly before his death, Keith credited his career to chance. But there was more to it than that.

He was the real deal, and he radiated professional authenticity. Questioning his judgment, resisting his influence, defying his “advice” was unthinkable. To do so – it happened; after all, we were kids – would seldom result in a scolding from Keith. But peer pressure would be immediate and damning.

He was a fierce defender of his students. One day a chemistry professor called him to complain bitterly about a mistake in a story an NT Daily reporter had written about his course. Keith reminded him that the Daily served a teaching lab for journalism students.

“When one of your students makes a mistake in lab, the only people who know about it are you and maybe their lab partner,” he told the fuming professor. “When one of my students makes a mistake, everybody on campus knows about it. Because we tell them. And then we correct it.”

End of conversation.

When I was NT Daily editor in Fall 1972, we ran a story on the last day of the semester about the president of the university misusing money from the Student Services Fee, a violation of state law.

Instead of using the fee money for “the betterment of student life,” President C.C. “Jitter” Nolen had used it to renovate the presidential residence and build a fancy, state-of-the-art barbecue pit in his backyard.

The story was picked up by the Dallas and Fort Worth papers and was extremely embarrassing for the university and for Nolen, an unpopular president with no advanced degrees who got the job because he was a successful fund-raiser for TCU.

A couple of days after the story ran, Keith attended a faculty reception at the Presidential Mansion, an act of moral courage if ever I’ve heard it. But that was only the beginning.

As he stood sipping a drink, the chairman of the NTSU board of regents, a rich oil man named A.M. “Monk” Willis bustled up to him.

“Goddamn it, Keith, what are you people trying to do to us?” yelled Willis, who knew Shelton from his reporting days.

Keith looked at the irate chairman coolly, then replied, “Just trying to keep you folks honest, Monk.”

Even now, Keith’s response seems both fool-hardy and – incredibly, unbelievably, gloriously – courageous.

Is it any wonder that Keith’s students – if called upon – would charge through a stone wall for the guy?

The desire for Keith’s approval was universal in the NT J-Department of the 1970s. I remember a particular incident that occurred on a Saturday afternoon in mid-summer.

Four of us – all former or future NT Daily editors – decided, out of boredom or just stupidity, to smuggle a suitcase full of beer into the Daily office, where we spent most of our free time.

We sat in the middle of the office – the whole J-building was empty as a tomb, remember it was a Saturday – drinking the beer and luxuriating in our debauchery.

At that moment, the door opened and in strode the last person we expected to see in the Daily office on a summer Saturday afternoon: a grim-faced Keith Shelton.

He stood there, hands on his hips, and stared hard-eyed at us. Caught like rats in a trap, we meekly braced for the tirade we expected and deserved.

His face then softened into disappointment and sadness. It was like a knife slicing into our guts as we realized what the look meant. We had violated his trust.

“You know better than this, guys,” he said mildly. “No drinking on premises.”

Turning on his heel, he walked out. Looking at each other, we all realized we had truly, irretrievably effed up. It never happened again.

He was a complete man – devoted husband, loving father, dependable friend – but also a man of sound judgment and rock-ribbed integrity. A perfect role model for a bunch of young people coping with the turmoil of the times.

Over the years, I managed to keep in touch with Keith. We became, I hope and believe, friends. I spent 37 years as a newspaperman, applying the lessons I learned from him in the rickety old Journalism Building, now long gone from campus.

Among those lessons, these stand out:

n  -- Trust no one completely, but be completely trustworthy yourself.

n  -- Value the truth above all, but understand that, ultimately, it’s unknowable.

n  -- Facts are essential, but pursue them with an understanding heart.

n  -- People are weird – but often wonderful.

Now retired, I’m an adjunct instructor at UNT’s Mayborn School of Journalism. I flatter myself that I’m carrying on his tradition, but who am I kidding? Teachers like Keith Shelton don’t come along too often.

They are oh-so-rare. That’s what makes them so valuable and what makes Keith’s passing so painful.

God speed, dear friend. And thanks.

Keith Shelton was the complete man -- devoted husband, loving father and dependable friend. A man who changed lives. May he rest in peace.