Wisconsin writer Michael Schumacher, who wrote everything from biographies of director Francis Ford Coppola and musician Eric Clapton to tales of shipwrecks in the Great Lakes region, has died at age 75.
MADISON, Wis. – Michael Schumacher, a Wisconsin writer who wrote everything from biographies of director Francis Ford Coppola and musician Eric Clapton to stories about shipwrecks in the Great Lakes region, has died. He was 75.
Schumacher's daughter, Emily Joy Schumacher, confirmed Monday that her father died on December 29. She did not give a cause of death.
Schumacher has written biographies as varied as Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life; “Crossroads: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton”; and Lion of Dharma: A Biography of Allen Ginsberg, the preeminent poet and writer of the Beat Generation.
Other biographies included “Mr. Basketball: George Mikan, Minneapolis Lakers.” & The Birth of the NBA” and “Will Eisner: The Life of a Dreamer in Comics.” Eisner was one of the first cartoonists to work on American comics and a pioneer of the concept of the graphic novel.
Although Schumacher was born in Kansas, he lived most of his life in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He studied political science at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside but dropped out just one credit shy of graduating, his daughter said. He gravitated toward writing at a young age, she said, and essentially built two writing careers—one devoted to biographies and the other to Great Lakes lore.
Living on the shores of Lake Michigan in Kenosha, Schumacher spoke about how the cargo ship Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a storm on Lake Superior in 1975; a November 1913 storm that killed more than 250 Great Lakes sailors; and how four sailors fought to survive on Lake Michigan after their ship sank during a storm in 1958.
Emily Joy Schumacher described her father as a “historic man” and a “good man.” She said he worked by hand, filling out countless notebooks and then copying them out on a typewriter. She said she still remembers the sound of the keys clicking.
“My father was very generous to people,” Emily Joy Schumacher said. “He loved people. He loved talking to people. He loved listening to people. He loved stories. When I think of my dad, I think of him engaged in conversation, coffee in hand and notepad.”
