Larry Shumaker:  

Boomer Reassesses Goals and Takes on New Challenges (May 2007) By: Kelly Janas At age 51, Larry Shumaker has no desire to retire. Over the past several years, however, he has done some reevaluation of his life and goals. What he decided a couple of years ago after watching his wife, Mary, and their two children all earn college degrees was that he would return to school and fulfill a dream that he has had for more than 20 years: go to law school. That's a bit ironic, given that he grew up on a working farm in Bucyrus, Ohio, and initially had no aspirations to attend college, much less get an advanced degree. To him, college meant nothing more than investing a few years of his life to get a piece of paper. Nonetheless, upon his high school graduation, he began attending the Mansfield, Ohio, branch of The Ohio State University. It was just the thing to do. Youll Accompany Me Unable to complete his coursework at the Mansfield branch, Shumaker left small-town life and transferred credits to the main campus in Columbus, Ohio. It was here that he met Mary Mumford, the woman he would marry on Jan. 6, 1978, during his final year of college. Shumaker a rather robust man who, with his new goatee, bears quite a resemblance to one of his favorite rockers (Bob Seger) laughs sheepishly when he tells the story of how he and Mary met. But then, its somewhat difficult to imagine that a man who grew up operating heavy farm equipment, has ridden a Harley since the tender age of 13 and has restored a 1974 Plymouth Barracuda from the ground up, would ever wind up in a disco. Hey, it was after an Ohio State game. My roommate and I were looking for somewhere to hang out. If my Harley buddies ever knew that, I'd never live it down, he laughs. In his defense, he swears he was wearing raggedy jeans and an OSU sweatshirt, and NOT the stereotypical clothes of the era. Mary, of course, substantiates his story. Shumaker graduated in 1978 with a degree in production operations management and began his tenure at the Timken Company, one of the largest industrial corporations in Ohio and a leading global supplier of friction management and power transmission products. And Shumaker began to learn the value of higher education. I never understood the intrinsic value of the knowledge behind that piece of paper, until Timken turned that around for me. I didn't realize the importance of an education until I became acquainted with people who are amazingly intelligent. There are a lot of those at Timken, he says. Turn the Page Shumaker was hired for an entry-level position as an industrial engineer at Timken's plant in Bucyrus in July 1978. He began to work his way up the ladder, obtained a masters degree in business administration and started a family. When he was transferred to a new Timken facility in Canton, Ohio, in 1984, he began thinking about attending law school. Until this point, I had no inclination to attend law school. And, really, this was...Expand for more