James Lawrence Shelton Sr.

Jimmy was predeceased by his parents, Carrie and Herbert Shelton, and six brothers and sisters. Survivors include his wife, Muriel; son, James L. Shelton, Jr., and his wife Melanie of Indian Wells, CA; daughter, Heather Loyd, her husband Andrew, and grandsons Harold and Edward of Monkton, MD; as well as numerous nieces and nephews and their families.

A celebration of his life will be held at 3:00 p.m. on June 21, 2015, with a reception to follow. The celebration will be held at the Conetoe United Methodist Church, located at Hicks Street and Warren Street, Conetoe, NC 27819.

In lieu of flowers, please send contributions to the Conetoe United Methodist Church for the Conetoe Veterans’ Memorial, at Hicks Street and Warren Street, Conetoe, NC 27819; the Lower Cape Fear Hospice Foundation, 1414 Physicians Drive, Wilmington, NC 28401; or a charity of your choice.

More about Jimmy…

The USS Arizona in Honolulu; the beaches of Normandy; the WWII, Korean, and Vietnam Memorials in Washington, D.C.—these were the places Jimmy Shelton wanted to visit, where he needed to honor and bear witness to the loss of life and damage our veterans faced during his lifetime. Jimmy witnessed many of the hardships the world faced after WWII first-hand, leaving school at 15 to join the Merchant Marines in 1945 and delivering American rebuilding supplies on U.S. Liberty ships (as part of the Marshall Plan), built in Wilmington by the thousands as WWII war ships. Jimmy was drafted into the U.S. Army as he was going through the Panama Canal while with the Merchant Marines. After going through basic training in SC in July, he ended up serving in Germany and saw much of Europe. This was very heady stuff for a young man who had never even seen the ocean before he left home.

When he returned to North Carolina after completing his service, he returned to his birth home in Conetoe and was able to talk his way through his high school requirements so he could begin his college career at what is now East Carolina University (formerly ECTC). At graduation, he was recruited into the U.S. Public Health Service as an epidemiologist. His first assignment was to the Winston Salem County Health Department to collect blood samples and interview individuals to assess their risk for contracting venereal disease. Jimmy loved to talk to people about their VD and all of the people they had shared it with! After Winston Salem, he was promoted to do this same work in Washington, D.C., where he set up clinics in the local bars. He had lots of customers and was competitive with his peers in having the most blood samples drawn!

Around this time, Jimmy completed his Masters in Safety Education at NYU. Yes, the one in New York City! Whether he acquired his next position because of his new degree or the new position required him to accomplish his Master’s degree, we are unsure, but his next role was as of a Public Safety Officer. He reported to the Jacksonville (Florida) Health Department where he strived to improve citizens’ safety by training local health departments to warn their communities of the perils associated with household chemicals, dangerous driving (seat belts were a new thing back then), fire, and lawn mowers. He was able to travel throughout the state doing what he did best: entertaining and charming crowds while getting across his message of public safety. Jimmy was on TV multiple times and served in Florida for 10 years before moving with Marylyn and Jamie to a new federal position in Atlanta, Georgia, as part of the Consumer Protection Agency (CPA).

The bureaucracy of the CPA was not compatible with Jimmy’s skills and interests and he quickly found a new role with an emerging agency known today as Head Start, covering an eight-state territory. He served as the Parent Involvement Specialist, focusing on giving voice to low-income parents who were participating in their local programs. Jimmy was effective at regional, state, and local levels once again doing what he did best: entertaining and charming and educating audiences throughout the southeast.

His next position, which fell under the same branch of the Administration for Children and Families (DHHS) as Head Start, was as a Disability Specialist. Jimmy’s new responsibilities were to help develop and disseminate strategies for educating young children with disabilities. This was a challenging task but Jimmy excelled in his, “train the trainer” system to ensure integration of services and provide high-quality classroom materials for teachers and children. This became a national model. The products developed during his tenure with the program, which promoted a solid understanding of child development using commonly accepted developmental milestones are still used to this day, which surprised Jimmy greatly since he retired from this position almost 30 years ago back in 1987.

Jimmy’s move back to North Carolina in 1987 following his 30+ year government career was a move he made with his heart, which really and truly was to return to the large, extended and boisterous Shelton clan he had left in eastern North Carolina so many years before. If he wasn’t driving up the road from Wrightsville Beach to take a ride-about to visit his many sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews as well as their families, then he could surely be found talking to them on the phone when he took breaks from reading multiple newspapers and maintaining his command of local, national and world events through various news outlets. On his ride-abouts, Jimmy was able to sniff the best sources for every eastern North Carolina specialty, whether you were seeking ‘cue, hoop cheese, red pepper jelly or Bertie County blistered peanuts.

The other passion Jimmy was able to live out in his retirement was his dedication to U.S. veterans. He did not care whether someone served in a war, a police action, or during peace time. He knew from first-hand experience that all who serve make a great sacrifice. Jimmy visited all of those aforementioned war memorials as well as many others. Antietam was a particularly special visit to him as his great-grandfather, Wiley Simpson Bullock, perished there on his first day in battle after having walked for months from North Carolina to Pennsylvania during the War of Northern Aggression. He also gave honor to those who died at Custer’s Last Stand and was proud to pay tribute to the Confederate soldiers who gave their lives as part of the H.L. Hunley submarine crew, attending their burial ceremony in 2004, which was a dramatic re-enactment of Civil War-period funerals.

With many of his formative years being spent on the U.S. liberty ships, Jimmy’s support of the John W. Brown Memorial Foundation was of particular importance to him. He visited the John W. Brown at port in Baltimore, Maryland, where it stands today as a living memorial to the importance of winning WWII. Jimmy also had the fortunate opportunities twice to cruise on the John W. Brown. He sailed down the Cape Fear River out of Wilmington as well as on the Ashley and Cooper Rivers in Charleston, SC—the same port he first sailed out of when he had first left home at the tender age of 15. The Charleston cruise was a particularly fine memory for Jimmy as it included a re enactment of Franklin D. Roosevelt speaking, WWII fighter pilots overhead, a tour of a working war ship, and 1940’s music and dancing.

It was no surprise then, to those who knew Jimmy well, that he worked feverishly in his last years to help establish the Conetoe Veterans’ Memorial. It had been important to him to support honor flights for WWII veterans to visit the war memorial in Washington, D.C. So at some point, Jimmy thought, “why not here too?” Jimmy personally knew many veterans around the Conetoe area who had given so much in serving their country and he wanted us all to remember their sacrifice, regardless of when or how they served. He felt veterans shouldn’t have to travel far to see how much they were valued in the community for the duties they had performed while in service. Jimmy had a lot of help—Linda Meeks, Jimmy and Josephine Worsley, and many others, but this was the legacy for which Jimmy really wanted to leave behind. Not for him, but for all of the others who served.