Neal Shine was born September 14, 1930, the oldest of three sons to Patrick Shine, a Detroit streetcar conductor, and Mary Ellen Shine, a housekeeper.  His parents were Irish immigrants who met and married in Detroit. He was raised on the city’s east side, attending St. Rose grade and high schools. He was graduated from St. Rose in 1948 and was president of his senior class.  

He enrolled at the University of Detroit, joking later that his father said he could go to any college he wanted as long as he could take the streetcar to get there and be home every night for dinner.  His senior year at U-D he was named managing editor of the campus newspaper, The Varsity News. He graduated in 1952 with a degree in journalism.  

Neal went on to graduate school at U-D to pursue a master’s degree in sociology but had to discontinue his studies when hewas drafted into the Army in 1953, shortly after his marriage to Phyllis Knowles, whom he had met at St. Rose. Their first child, Judith Ann, was born a week before he was sent overseas and assigned to a medical battalion in Salzburg, Austria. Five more children were born to them over the next 10 years. 

He was discharged from the service in 1955 and returned to his job as a copyboy at the Detroit Free Press, a position he first had as a junior of U-D in 1950. He fetched coffee and sandwiches for the reporters, plugged parking meters and ran copy from reporters to editors. He earned $3.55 a day, but would have done it for free. 

At the end of 1955 he was promoted to reporter at the Free Press and over the next several years his assignments included coverage of courts, police, government, labor, education, politics and business. In 1963 Neal was named assistant city editor and became city editor in 1965. His staff won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the 1967 riots in Detroit. 

In 1971 Neal was promoted to managing editor and was made senior managing editor in 1982, the same year he began writing three columns a week for the paper. A collection of his columns, called “Neal Shine on Sunday,” was published in 1986 by the Free Press.  

He retired from the Free Press in 1989 to become professor of journalism at Oakland University. By that time he had already spent 25 years teaching part-time at the University of Detroit, Wayne State, Michigan State and Oakland.

He guided the careers of many fledgling reporters, wrote numerous letters of recommendation, counseled scores of students and entertained countless classes with his war stories of the newspaper business.  

On April 9, 1990, nine months after his retirement, Knight Ridder, then parent company of the Free Press, asked him to return to the paper as publisher. He retired from that position on Dec. 31, 1995, after more than 45 years at the paper.  

During his years as publisher he was heavily involved in the life of the community, serving on the boards of more than 35 civic and community organizations. He has received more than three dozen awards for his work in the community, in addition to numerous journalistic awards. 

Neal has honorary doctorates from the University of Detroit Mercy, the University of Michigan, Central Michigan University, Siena Heights College and Cleary College. 

In 2000, the Journalism School at Michigan State University established the Neal Shine Fund for Ethics in Journalism with an initial grant from the Detroit Free Press of $100,000. Also in 2000, he was named recipient of the Carl Schurz Award from the German-American Heritage Foundation, International, for using journalism to help foster understanding in a diverse society. 

Neal returned to Oakland University in 1996 where he continued to teach journalism until his retirement in September 2005. 

In 2006, the University of Detroit Mercy, his alma mater, named its new media center “The Neal Shine Media Center.” 

Neal and Phyllis raised six children and became grandparents to 17. He was a fun-loving father, often acting sillier than his kids. He was a doting grandfather, attending school plays, choir concerts, recitals and sporting events. He loved nothing more than being surrounded by his family, whether at his summer cottage in Canada or on a family trip to Ireland or Austria. 

On April 3, 2007 he died at Bon Secours Hospital in Grosse Pointe after a brief illness.