Obituary of James T. Shidner

James (Jim) Thomas Shidner died at age 92, at 8 AM on August 5, 2024. He is survived by his wife of 72 years, Frances, and four children, nine grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. Jim was born on March 7, 1932 in the Hancock's Bridge, New Jersey home of Thomas and Elizabeth (Clark) Shidner. Work was rationed because of the Great Depression – Thomas got one day a week at DuPont's Dyeworks in Deepwater. When Jim was born, his dad was given two days a week. To be closer to the factory, and give Thomas a better chance of picking up extra day or two of work, the Shidner family moved in 1935 to a rented house on Zane Street just off Broadway in Pennsville. Jimmy attended kindergarten and first grade at Pennsville Elementary. At age seven, Jimmy began working on area farms to earn money for the family. In a move that foretold his future, he soon decided to go into business for himself. For the 1939 Christmas he asked for, and received a wagon, one with high sides for hauling things, like the farmers had on their farm trucks. For ten cents Jimmy would haul people's trash to the dump, a half mile out of town. He'd separate and bundle the glass, tin cans and newspapers for resale to a junk man who came through town once a month. At age eight, Jimmy Shidner made his life goal becoming a millionaire. That was some serious money in the 1930's. With the outbreak of World War 2, Thomas began working full time. Jimmy was working on the Elsinboro farm of his Uncle Joe Ridgeway. His uncle was a tough, but fair man who paid his nephew like an adult and expected the kid to work accordingly. Jimmy learned more than just farming. He'd accompany Uncle Joe when he took cattle to the local butcher shop, operated by two brothers, Harry and Izzy Sendrow. Farmers and butcher shop employees gathered to watch the bargaining ritual between the Quaker farmer and Jewish butcher. They dickered over the price of each cow, smoking, bantering and telling jokes. No doubt entertaining themselves as much as the onlookers. When they finally agreed on a price, they sometimes flipped a coin for double or nothing. Young Jimmy was learning how to conduct business. This was where he met Harry Sendrow's son, Sy, ten years older and a part-time worker at the shop. Years later Sy opened a men's clothing store in Pennsville, and dressed Jim for success. Dad would call Sy for a new suit. By the time he got to Sy's there'd be three picked out with shirts and ties. Dad never knew his size. Sy was Jim's mentor and friend. This was 1943, and the young farmer had an immediate problem, allergies. He didn't know that at the time. He was three years from seeing Dr Bancroft, a Wilmington specialist, and finding out he had 28 allergies, the worst being Timothy Hay and cow hair. Uncle Joe's dairy farm had an abundance of both. Harvesting wheat or bailing hay in the 100-degree heat of August was difficult work. With allergies, it was misery. Sometimes Jimmy would faint, fall off the hay wagon. and scramble back his position to the sound of Uncle Joe barking, "Come on, Flunker." That word was a euphemism for a stronger "F" word. Regardless the form of the verbal whip, sick days, excuses and complaints were not permitted. Men were dying in a war. Eleven-year-old Jimmy, like everyone else, just had to tough it out. After finishing the harvest, it was discovered that Jimmy had a hernia. Fortunately, school was starting, signaling the end of the heavy farm labor and the beginning of muskrat season. Jesse Shidner first dragged his grandson into the meadows to tend his "rat" traps at age eight. When the boot-sucking mud slowed the boy to an intolerable pace, Jesse would carry him over one shoulder while holding a string of muskrats in the other hand. Two years later he was ready to strike out on his own. Jesse took him to Lou, a Hancock's Bridge boat builder. Jimmy soon had an 8' square-ended meadow boat. He was soon placing his homemade turkey wire traps in muskrat runs. Brown pelts fetched $5 and black, $7. The meat was sold to Philadelphia and New York restaurants who served it as a delicacy, "Marsh Rabbit." Muskrat trapping was Jimmy's lucrative side hustle until he graduated high school. By 1944, working in Ponsul (dyes) at Dupont's was taking a toll on Thomas Shidner. Jimmy noticed his father was thin, sallow complected and covered with boils. Twelve year-old Jimmy emptied his bank account and talked his father into buying a 165 acre Elsinoro farm from Ross Hogg. Thomas knew nothing about the farming business, but Jimmy was confident his time working for Uncle Joe taught him all they needed to succeed. It was a typical South Jersey farm of that time. The crops were hay, wheat, corn, and the big cash crop, tomato. They had 130 head of milk cow, of which 45 were milking cows, which earned them a milk contract with Richmond's ice cream, and later Abbot's milk out of Philly. Tomatoes brought in 4-6 thousand a year, milk and rest another 4-6. So, after all the bills were paid, for seven day a week labor from pre-dawn to dusk, a farmer got eight to twelve thousand a year, if weather, pests and disease treated him right. This was about the same pay Thomas got at DuPont's. A year later, his father was a tan, robust and boil free farmer. They farmed until selling the farm in 1969. Despite his allergies which required regular injections, Jim entered Salem High School thinking farming would be his life's work. A member of the school's Future Farmers of America, Jim was New Jersey cow judging champion for 1947-8. After graduating in 1949, seventeen-year-old Jim Shidner joined the United States Coast Guard. He was stationed at Bloody Point Lighthouse in the Chesapeake Bay, and enjoying the Baltimore nightlife any chance he got. He was sporting around town in a brand-new Hudson automobile. That car payment was $130. His service pay was $118 a month. His side hustle in the service was printing fake IDs for other underage servicemen. During the leave for Christmas Holidays in 1951, Jim asked another underage patron in the Hollywood Club, eighteen-year-old Frances Lois Hartley, to dance to Hank William's "Hey Good Looking." Six weeks later, they were married Feb 9, 1952. That summer, on leave from the Coast Guard, the twenty-year-old husband brought his pregnant bride to the family farm for tomato season. Earing twelve cents a basket, the same as the Puerto Rican migrant workers, Jim picked a hundred baskets a day, and earned $200 to buy his first TV; a nine-inch black and white combo with phonograph and AM radio. Their first child, Ritchie Allen, was born in December. Honorably discharged from the Coast Guard in 1953, James found he "couldn't buy a job." Despite his allergies, James returned to farm work to the support his family. Their second child, Randall Lee, was born in 1955 while Jim worked on the huge Trenton area farm. When the farm was sold the family of four moved to South Jersey. They rented a house next to the Salem County Hospital. Jim drove a truck for a local shipping company, Salem Express. One day the boss asked Jim if he would drive a load of dry ice from the DuPont plant to Newark N.J, on the 4th of July holiday. Jim replied, "Hey I'd do anything to make a day's pay." His check that week was his regular $75.00. Jim tried to clear the discrepancy. In front of a room full of truck drivers, milling about at the end of the work day, the bookkeeper called the owner, Bill Harris, who demanded to know why Jim wanted more pay than the other fellas. Jim replied, "They didn't spend their 4th of July driving that load of ice that the DuPont Co paid you for. I'm not asking for time and a half. I'm asking for straight time." Harris said, "We don't pay any driver for extra days and we're not payin' ya!" Jim quit and told the bookkeeper to write him a check for that day's pay. As he walked out, check in hand, the bookkeeper shouted, "You'll be back." That weekend the bookkeeper called two or three times, 'Uncle Bill wants you to come back to work," I said "No. He wants me to come in so he can fire me in front of the men I quit in front of. I'm not going to accommodate him." When Jim Shidner took over his grandfather's insurance agency three years later, Bill Harris gave him all his trucking and personal business. Jim wasn't unemployed for long. The publisher of Salem's Toady's Sunbeam, Tom Bowen, offered him the job of office manager. Jim didn't know if he was qualified, and sought advice from his maternal grandfather and namesake, James Clark. "Did the man approach you, or you him?" Jim said Tom Bowen called him "out of nowhere." His grandfather advised him that he had nothing to lose. Jim was now making $80 a week, with the promise of regular raises. With that new job and aid of the GI Bill, Jim and Frances bought a small house on Georgia Road in Penn Beach area of Pennsville. He told Fran, "If we ever make $100 a week, we'll have it made." She encouraged him to take accounting classes at the University of Delaware. In 1956, while at Today's Sunbeam, Jim was instrumental in starting a local newspaper, The Pennsville Progress, and changing the township name from Lower Penns Neck to Pennsville. His ailing grandfather soon asked Jim to help with his small home-based insurance business. This led to Jim buying the business in 1958. That same year, Jim was invited to join Rotary International. Jim was a proud member for 66 years, in both Pennsville, New Jersey and Crystal River, Florida. While still living at the tiny Georgia Road room house, his third son, Robert Wesley, was born in 1960. Jim was elected Pennsville Township tax assessor in 1962, and served for the next thirty years. In 1963, Clark-Shidner Insurance finally left his grandfather's home office on Dolbow Avenue for a new building on Broadway in Pennsville. The new offices were built on the same empty lot Jim played on when his family lived on Zane Street twenty years earlier. When he sold the Clark-Shidner Insurance agency in 1990 there were 18 employees in 2 Salem County offices 1965 was a wild year for Jim. He opened a local restaurant and bar, The Mariner. A month later Fran gave birth to a daughter, Rhonda Joanna. Pennsville was Jim's adopted home, and he always considered himself lucky to raise his family and do business in such a "fine little town." He liked to quote his friend and fellow Rotarian, Bob Laughrey, "I was good for Pennsville, and Pennsville was good for me." Jim loved to say, "All my kids know how to work." Our dad definitely taught us "how to put your back into it." I remember bailing hay with him as a fifteen-year-old. He was a thirty-five-year-old business man and it was all I could do to keep up with him. My one goal was not to hear him call me a "flunker," a second time. No doubt my brothers and sister can tell similar stories. Our dad knew how to work, and have a good time. He definitely played as hard as he worked. For ten years, we made annual stag camping trips to Assateague, a wild island off the coast of Maryland/Virginnia. The whole family camped in Maine in 1964. Our dad had boats since he broke that $100 a week barrier in 1959. We spent glorious summers on the Chesapeake Bay, and can all swim, crab, fish, sail, and water ski, thanks to our dad. We also learned how to open a can of beer and not spill it while walking on a speeding boat. Dad was a lifelong fan of every Philadelphia sports teams. As a farm boy, the summers were all work all the time, he only had every other Sunday off. In 1948, on one of those Sundays, he drove to Connie Mac stadium and paid $5 to see the Phillies play for the first time. The live experience was so much better than listening on the radio that two weeks later he drove the farm pickup truck to Yankee Stadium to watch his favorite ball player, Ted Williams. That fall he again drove on a whim to Connie Mac Stadium to see the Philadelphia Eagles play the Chicago Bears. He was standing near the field taking in the sights when he felt someone pushing on his back. Without turning he swatted the hand away. Again, the hand shoved him. My dad was 16, maybe 5'8' and 140 pounds, but he wasn't going to be pushed around. He turned and came face to face with the Eagle's center, Alex Wojciechowicz, in uniform, with the whole team behind him, waiting to get on the field.. "Son, you wanna step aside so we can get this game started." In 1969, my dad and some friends were enjoying a few post-bowling cocktails at the Crescendo Lounge when they decided to fly down to Miami for Super Bowl III. Friday morning, they easily score decent seats in the old Orange Bowl for $15 a ticket. That night at Bachelor's III nightclub they witnessed Joe Namath get shot down by a young lady. The nonchalant manner exhibited by the New York QB's public rejection convinced Sy Sendrow to change their bets to the Jets. They still rooted for the losing Colts but flew home with some money in their pockets. He, Sy and few other friends had season tickets for the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team in the 1970's. Dad once dragged me along with them to see the Broad Street Bullies. Maybe they thought I could function as their semi-sober driver. I have no memory of anything other than meeting at the Crescendo Lounge for a pregame tune-up. How they drove to Philly and back that many years without a DUI said more about the times than their drunk driving skills. Our dad loved Dixie land jazz. He made several pilgrimages to New Orleans to see Al Hirt, Pete Fountain and Louie Armstrong. When Dad would put on a Pete Fountain album, it drove me to mow the lawn. His comedy records were another story. Our father loved comedy and the laughter it produced. He had a ton of comedy records. I remember my parents and their friends drinking high-balls and listening to comedy records on Georgia Rd. Dad's laugh was the most wonderful and real sound I ever heard him make at that point in our lives. When we bought The First Family comedy record in 1962, Dad had me listen to it with him. No doubt he was curious as to how many of the jokes I got. He loved Jackie Gleason Show, Laugh-In and any TV comedies. If a standup comic came on the Ed Sullivan Show it was his church time. No one dared talk. He saw so many comics live, like Don Rickles, Moms Mabley, Alan King, and Bob Newhart; many at The Latin Casino in Cherry Hill and then later the Atlantic City casinos. The first stand-up comic he remembered seeing was around 1960. Dad was at an insurance convention in Atlantic City. A fellow conventioneer, from New York City, said Redd Foxx was playing at Club Harlem. They were pretty much the only white guys in the audience. Redd was hilarious. He then brought on a friend to do a little bit, Don Rickles. Don went right after my dad and his friend, "Look at these two white guys. Looking for your wives, boys?" The place went nuts but the New Yorker had to explain the joke to dad. He didn't miss many. Like any person who valued comedy, my dad had a great memory for a funny line or story. Four years ago, my dad recalled an incident from 1960, when flood insurance became a new offering. He pitched the new product to Sy Sendrow and his friend said, "Jim, I know how to start a fire, but how do you start a flood." Another of my favorites of his came from a Baltimore Orioles game. One of the companies dad repped was Maryland Casualty, which had box seats behind third base at Memorial Stadium, the Orioles' home field. Dad would get the box a few times a year. Once, the dreaded Yankees were staging a ninth inning comeback. The guy in the box, wearing an Orioles hat started screaming for the Yankees. My dad called him out, "Hey, aren't you an O's fan?" The man said, "Oh, my heart's with the Orioles, but my money's with the Yankees." Surprisingly, I was surprised that dad could remember sixty years later. He said, "How could you not remember something that funny." Right again, dad. My dad not only had a great sense of humor but was quick with a funny line. In my prejudiced opinion, he was probably a top-ranked amateur of his generation. I broke my foot in 1984. My dad asked what happened. I told him that I was dancing in this club and some guy came down on my foot." He shot back, "Dance with women they're lighter." He had so many, and kept firing to the end. The last time he was conscious and responsive was last Wednesday, the morning of July 31, the nurse woke him for medication. He smiled and recognized me. He was gaunt and weak. He and not eaten anything the day before and didn't want anything that morning. I asked if he wanted something to drink. He nodded yes. He took a sip of water and said hoarsely, "That should gain my weight back." I said, "Good thing, dad. We have to bail hay in two weeks." He smiled. That was the last exchange I had with him. Deathbed humor with my dad. Anybody can crack jokes when you're 22 and walking in the sunshine, but to be 92, on your deathbed and crack wise. To me, that's top shelf. My dad wasn't much of a reader, but he gave me two books when I was young, one of Will Rogers' quotes and another about Mark Twain. His favorite Twain line was, "When I was a boy of 14, my father man was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." I didn't get that line until I was about 32. Didn't want to. Yesterday my mom gave me a cassette tape I made for my dad in 1990. On it was a song by Roseanne Cash about her father, My Old Man. Hadn't heard that song in a long time. "The Old Man's laughing tonight. He's young beyond his fears. Then the smile drops from his eyes and we all end up in tears." My dad wasn't a saint. He was raised rough and was trying to make something of himself when we kids came along. I can't speak for my brothers and sister; we each had a different relationship with dad. For dad and I, early in life terror, dread and anxiety dominated. I got sober in 1985, dad about 1989. We each used some tools that were freely given to us and cleaned up the wreckage of our past. From that moment everything between us changed; understanding replaced condemnation, mutual respect redefined old memories and love washed away all the fear. I'm forever grateful for all my father did for me. Dad became the man he was always meant to be, loving and generous. His hugs, smiles and kind words are who he was to me. We all knew it was his time to go. We prayed he'd go in his sleep. Since he died, all I want is to hear him say my name. I have no idea what happens when we die. I do know this, the thought of my dad fishing and laughing with all his old buddies makes me happy. RIP JT Shidner