Tom Schumaker, 86, died peacefully on Jan. 7 at a hospice in Delray Beach, Florida, following several months of declining health. ...
He started at the Wabash Plain Dealer as a sportswriter, and went on to became sports editor and then editor. He was recruited to be executive editor of a short-lived newspaper in Bloomington, Indiana, and then became managing editor at the competing newspaper in Bloomington, the Herald-Telephone, now known as the Herald-Times. He left Indiana in 1971 to become editor at the Boca Raton News in Florida, and a few years later Knight-Ridder transferred him to the Grand Forks Herald in North Dakota as the managing editor, later becoming general manager and publisher. He was recruited to be publisher of Transcript-Telegram in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and then took a similar position at the nearby Greenfield Recorder.
He finished his newspaper career as publisher of Knight-Ridder’s Keynoter in Marathon, Florida, where he also hosted a popular television interview program on the local access channel. He retired in 1999 and moved to Highland Beach, Florida, where he lived for the next 25 years.
