THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 20, 1996 TAG: 9607200213
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LYNN WALTZ, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 78 lines
The same drive that led William L. Shepheard Sr. to fight to reopen the public schools in 1959, to oppose the poll tax in 1966 and to build a multimillion-dollar business kept him alive until he saw his first great-granddaughter two weeks ago.
Thursday night, Shepheard, 84, died at his River Crescent home, dynamic until the last, his children said Friday.
``After he had a stroke in February, I kept telling him Jennifer was coming,'' his son William Shepheard Jr. said Friday. ``He really pulled himself together, then maybe he just said, `I've done it now. Time to move on.' ''
The stroke, Shepheard's fifth, ended his career at Air-A-Plane Corp., where he was chairman of the board. The first four had slowed him down, but hadn't stopped him, his son said.
The spirit of drive and determination started when the Portsmouth native lost his parents by the age of 21. ``He'd push a pea up a mountain with his nose just to prove he could do it,'' his son said.
As a political advocate in the 1950s, Shepheard called upon City Council to endorse the continued operation of the public school system after a court ruling ordering the admittance of 17 blacks to Norfolk junior and senior high schools threatened closure.
In September 1958, Shepheard dismissed plans to open private schools to avoid integration.
``It's half-baked to think private schools can be set up for 10,000 pupils overnight,'' he told the council. ``Disaster impends for a great many individuals'' if public schools do not open.
His daughter, Lynette S. Regan, was a senior at Granby High School at the time. ``He thought it was wrong to close the public schools that way,'' she recalled. ``He fought very hard for that re-opening.''
Regan said her father was ``dynamic'' in every way, a great reader and thinker, and also a great extrovert and businessman.
Shepheard's own education was cut short in the Depression. He managed to raise a younger brother and get some college education. His first job was at the Ford assembly plant, which he called ``a rich education; it taught me how to work myself and to work others.''
In 1933, he opened his first business, a sheet metal business called William L. Shepheard & Co.
``He started the business with $500 he borrowed from my mother, who was a secretary,'' his son recalled. ``She had squirreled away $500 to buy a baby blue convertible and she gave it to my father. She never got the convertible.''
At the end of World War II, Shepheard opened the Air-A-Plane business, which provides air conditioning to the interior of planes while they are sitting at the gate.
In 1946, in Washington National Airport, he met somebody he had known from Maury High School who helped him realize he could use his knowledge of heating and air conditioning buildings to cool airplanes, his son said.
Since then, he sold the air conditioners or provided service in 127 countries, including the latest contract, for the Hong Kong Airport. The company provides service to all planes at airports in such cities as Osaka, Copenhagen, Rome, Milano, Denver, Charlotte and Washington National, among many others.
As an inventor, Shepheard received numerous patents, including his 1961 patent for a rocket heat shield, which established the basic principle for all re-entry vehicles used before the space shuttle.
He was married for 59 years to Marie Tabit Shepheard, who died in 1994. He has three children, seven grandchildren and one great-grandaughter.
``He was very much a family person, '' his daughter said. ``His family was his life along with his business.''
Shepheard was paralyzed on the right side and in a wheelchair after his last stroke, but ``willed himself to stay alive'' to see his new great-granddaughter this month, his daughter said.
``He wasn't able to articulate his feelings,'' his son said. ``But I saw it in his eyes. Pride. Pleasure. All the things that a great-grandfather could say. But it wasn't just Jennifer. She just happened to be the newest. He had that same gleam in his eye for all his children and grandchildren.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
W.L. Shepheard Sr.
KEYWORDS: OBITUARY by CNB