April 12, 2007
BY JOE SWICKARD
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Neal Shine wore his University of Michigan socks to his funeral Wednesday because his family figured somebody else could use his shoes.
"Mom figured, 'Why waste a good pair of shoes?' " said Shine's son Dan, who was wearing his dad's newest suit, size 43-long.
"They said he never wore it, but I found his hankie in the back pocket," said Dan, the youngest of Shine's six children.
From his stocking feet to an old suit, a blend of charity, practicality and frugality held sway for Shine as more than 700 relatives, friends, neighbors and old schoolmates gathered at St. Ambrose Catholic Church to say good-bye to the retired Free Press publisher with some tears and a lot of laughter.
"Neal would be very proud," said Eleanor Josaitis, who cofounded Focus: HOPE in 1968 with Shine's friend Father William Cunningham. "It's not so serious. They've kept the humor.
"You know, he's up there in heaven with Father Bill just shooting the bull, and St. Peter will never get a word in edgewise," Josaitis said.

Familiar laughs
Dan and Shine's youngest brother, Bill, delivered two of the eulogies to the packed church in Grosse Pointe Park. The tales were familiar, even if some of the details seemed fresh.
"Oh, well," said Bill Shine, who regaled the congregation with an account of Neal tying him to a clothes pole as the central figure in a backyard Good Friday enactment.
"If you heard one of Neal's stories 10 times, you heard about eight versions," Bill Shine said. "But they were true."
Shine, 76, died April 3 after a reappearance of the lymphatic cancer that he'd overcome in the 1990s. He was stricken while vacationing in Florida last month and died after returning to Detroit.
The lying-in-state was scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Wednesday, and Shine, never one to make a last-minute appearance, arrived at 8:17 a.m. in a Verheyden Funeral Home hearse accompanied by two minivans containing flowers and tributes.
Shortly before 9 a.m., his wife, Phyllis, arrived with his prayer book and gold football letter sweater from St. Rose High School, where they'd met when she was 14.

A reception made in Detroit
Shine grew up on the east side of Detroit amid blue-collar bungalows and two-flats, just a couple of miles from St. Ambrose, and never lost his passion for all things Detroit -- and it held true at Wednesday's celebration.
Better Made potato chips in yellow bags, Vernors in green cans and coney dogs in white foam to-go boxes were served -- along with swankier fare -- at the reception in the church hall.
The adults sipped pop, Irish whiskey and Stroh's beer. Kids, including many of his 17 grandchildren, scooted and raced around the hall.
"Shine would have absolutely loved this party," said Jane Briggs-Bunting, director of the Michigan State University School of Journalism. "Of course, fact-checking would have been an issue," she said.

Circle of friends
Former Detroit Police Chief Ike McKinnon, federal appeals Judge Damon Keith and a host of journalistic big deals helped fill the pews. The funeral mass was celebrated by the hierarchy of the Archdiocese of Detroit.
But Shine's spirit shone through his St. Rose schoolboy pals like Joe Schulte and Gordy Vidosh and downtown business people like Ron Malis.
"A group of us from St. Rose get together for breakfast every week -- and it would have been today," Schulte said. "We saw him just before he went to Florida. He said, 'I'll be back in May, and nobody die while I'm gone.' "
Malis, who owned the Porter Street Station restaurant, said Shine was a customer who drew him into a wider circle of service: "We hosted Father Bill's 60th birthday, and from there he linked me up with Focus: HOPE. That's just the way he was."
Some people scanned the room, as if looking for a tardy friend. "I'm sure Neal ought to be coming along to enjoy this," freelance writer Maureen McDonald said.
MSU professor Sheila Schimpf said Shine "hired me as a copyboy in 1968. The trouble with Neal is that I started with him when I was 19 ... and nothing ever equaled it."

"I think Neal went straight to heaven," said Pam Neubacher, a retired Birmingham schoolteacher who was married to the late Free Press reporter and columnist Jim Neubacher. "If this doesn't work," she said, looking around, "nothing does."


Contact JOE SWICKARD at 313-222-8769 or jswickard@freepress.com.