Michael Schumacher, author of Francis Ford Coppola and Eric Clapton biographies, dies aged 75 | US news
Wisconsin writer Michael Schumacher, who produced works ranging from biographies of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola and musician Eric Clapton to shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, has died. He was 75 years old.
Schumacher’s daughter, Emily Joy Schumacher, confirmed Monday that her father died on Dec. 29. He did not disclose the cause of death.
Schumacher, Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker’s Life; Crossroads: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton; and Dharma Lion: A Biography of Allen Ginsberg – leading poet and writer of the beat generation.
Other biographies included Mr. Basketball: George Mikan, the Minneapolis Lakers and the Birth of the NBA, and Will Eisner: A Dreamer’s Life in Comics. Eisner was one of the first cartoonists to work in US comics and was a pioneer of the comic strip concept.
Although born in Kansas, Schumacher lived most of his life in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He studied political science at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside but fell just one credit short of graduation, his daughter said. He said he was drawn to writing at a young age and essentially built two writing careers, one focused on biographies and the other on the Great Lakes.
Schumacher, who lives on the shores of Lake Michigan in Kenosha, described how the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald sank during a storm on Lake Superior in 1975; the November 1913 storm that claimed the lives of more than 250 Great Lakes sailors; and how four sailors fought to survive on Lake Michigan after their ship sank in a storm in 1958.
Emily Joy Schumacher described her father as a “history man” and a “good person.” He said he worked for a long time, filling countless notebooks and then transcribing them on a typewriter. He said he still remembers the keystrokes.
“My father was a very generous person 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 father, I think of him chatting with his coffee and notebook in his hand.”
