Roderick S. Shuman

July 1st, 1949 – January 7th, 2014

Rick Shuman, of Savannah, passed away at home from natural causes. According to his will, his family was given several choices of how to dispose of his earthly body. He considered burial at sea. He always liked the sea and the beach, the smell of the salt spray, seas birds flying all around, the sound of the waves. For this reason, he joined the United States Navy as a young man, hoping to see more of the world’s seas, and eventually served in Vietnam. After careful consideration, he decided that the possibility of being dragged up in some shrimper’s net, would not be a thing he would enjoy. Other options included hitching a ride on a Russian shuttle, and a Viking funeral wouldn’t have been a bad option; being laid down in a big dragon-neck ship on a bed of flowers covered with nicely scented wood, set afire, and pushed out to sea on his way to Valhalla. But, in this, he thought the environmental nuts would go crazy about the smoke polluting the air and his ashes polluting the sea. So, his family will have a more traditional service, with a twist, for him at Fairhaven Hubert C. Baker Chapel on Hodgson Memorial Sunday, January 11th. Visitation will be from 12pm – 1pm. The service begins at 1pm. He didn’t want a big fancy ceremony because he didn’t live a big fancy life. He asked that you save your money when it came to buying flowers. He didn’t consider cut flowers in fancy pots to be a good investment. You’ve been reading long enough, so this will only take another hour or so to tell you about the wonderful life Rick lead. It was full of reading books about natural science; being a very skilled woodworker, especially in the area of custom kitchen cabinets; being highly skilled in gardening and plant propagation, so much so that the legend holds that he could make a pressure treated post sprout limbs in a week; digging for fossils and hidden treasure; studying astonomy; listening to PRN, and generally loving his friends and family. After goin’ to the spirit in the sky, he left behind his mother Nell Shuman, daughter Ginny Edens, sister Jan Sellar and her husband Ron, sister-in-law Nancy Shuman, and a gang of aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, great-nieces, and great-nephews.