Watch now: Law, art and politics among domains of labor lawyer Bruce Shine - Johnson City Press (subscription)
KINGSPORT — Nationally recognized labor lawyer D. Bruce Shine died Monday, but he leaves behind a legacy in art and politics as well as law.
Shine, who was 83 and in recent years battled cancer, had a storied political career that included becoming the Democratic Party nominee for the First Congressional District seat held by then-U.S. Rep. Jimmy Quillen, R-Kingsport, running for U.S. Senate and running for governor before he withdrew from a primary race ultimately won by Democrat Phil Bredesen, who won the general election, too.
At age 12, Shine served as the page for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Estes Kefauver in the New Hampshire primary and at the 1952 Democratic National Convention, and in 1956 he directed Kefauver’s floor campaign for the vice presidential nomination, according to a July 23, 1967, Times News article by Margy Clark.
Shine also did plenty of his own writing — a book early in his career, as a columnist for the Times News until recently and posthumously by writing his own obituary.
“He wrote the obituary,” Betsy Shine, his wife of more than 52 years, said Wednesday afternoon of the obituary on the Hamlett-Dobson Funeral Home website and in Thursday’s Times News. “I’d think you could say it (his legacy) was the arts, politics and the law.”
That’s exactly how the 1967 Times News article about Shine put it: “Politics, law and the arts — a likely combination for an energetic newcomer.”
ARTS
Appointed by Gov. Buford Ellington to the original Tennessee Arts Commission in 1967, Shine was named chair of the TAC at age 31.
In 2005, Bredesen appointed Shine to the Tennessee Film, Entertainment and Music Commission. In 2009, he was reappointed by Bredesen to a term ending in 2013. Locally, he was appointed by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen to the Kingsport Public Arts Committee.
LAW
In 1967, Shine joined the law firm of McLellan Thatcher and Donahue of Washington and Kingsport. In 1969, he started his own firm Ferguson & Shine in Kingsport with Shelburne Ferguson Jr. At the time of his death he was a partner in the law firm of Shine & Rowlett, with Bart Rowlett III.
Rowlett, now assistant city attorney for Kingsport, worked for Shine from November 2011 until January 2020 when he went to work for the city.
“I spent the better part of eight years working for Bruce,” Rowlett said. “I practically idolized the man, to be honest.”
Even after Rowlett went to work for the city and Shine retired from active practice, Rowlett said he still valued and cherished Shine’s counsel.
“Every time I saw him, I always called him the professor,” Rowlett said of Shine’s advice on things such as the law and presenting in court, as well as interacting with judges and other attorneys. “Any time I do poorly, it’s because I didn’t listen to him.”
Rowlett said that Shine used to recall his move to Kingsport in 1967 and his first day on the job, April 1, 1967, in the law office of John McLellan II, the late father of current Sullivan County Circuit Judge John McLellan III.
Ferguson, who died earlier this year and like Shine was a long-time columnist for the Kingsport Times News, went on to help run Shine’s 1970 congressional race against Quillen.
But in 1967, “Shelburne was scared to death,” Rowlett said. He said the lawyer working for McLellan didn’t know if Shine was to replace him or it was all an April Fool’s Day joke since Shine’s first day on the job was April 1, 1967.
MORE POLITICS
A Nov. 1, 1970, article in the Times News, just before the general election, recounted that Shine served as an aide to Democratic Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a legislative assistant to U.S. Sen. Ross Bass, D-Tenn., and a legislative aide and state field secretary to U.S. Sen. Estes Kefauver, D-Tenn.
In 1960, he served on then-Sen. John F. Kennedy’s Democratic National Committee Speakers Bureau. He also worked at the NATO (North American Treaty Organization) information secretariat in Paris.
In 1966, he was named by U.S. Sen. Jacob Javits, R-N.Y., and Rep. Paul Findley, R-Ill, as an official American observer at NATO’s Parliamentarian conference in Paris.
While running for Congress in 1970, Betsy Shine said she he hired a country band to play at campaign stops and sang with the group.
EDUCATION AND MORE
Educated at Tusculum College in Greeneville, he graduated in 1960 with a bachelor of science degree in business administration. In 1964 he earned his doctor of jurisprudence degree from Vanderbilt University School of Law, then attended Columbia University School of Graduate Legal Studies in New York.
In 1999, he was awarded a master of laws degree from the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. In 1984 Tusculum College awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. He was licensed to practice law in Tennessee, New York and the District of Columbia.
In 2004, the Republic of Malta named Shine its Honorary Consul with jurisdiction over Tennessee and North Carolina. As Honorary Consul, Shine held diplomatic rank recognized by the U.S. State Department. At the time of his appointment he was the only foreign consul east of Nashville, west of Charlotte and north of Atlanta.
In 1996, the justices of the Tennessee Supreme Court appointed him a member of their Alternative Dispute Resolution Commission, and in 2012 appointed him as the commission’s chair for a two-year term. He served on the ADRC for 19 years until January 2015.
FAMILY
In 1969, Shine married Betsy Magoffin, now Betsy Shine and a Sullivan County election commissioner.
He is also survived by three sons, James Vincent Shine of Chicago, Cmdr. Edward Magoffin Shine, retired from the Navy and living in Chesapeake, Virginia, and David Bruce Shine Jr. of Rocky Mount, North Carolina. He also had two granddaughters Oliva Hetz Shine, and Cleo Elizabeth Shine of Chicago and two grandsons Colin Shine and Dylan Shine of Chesapeake.
The family will receive friends at Hamlett-Dobson Funeral Home at 5 p.m. Friday, Dec. 10, with a private funeral to be held later. In lieu of flowers the family asks that memorial gifts be made to Girls Inc., P.O. Box 981, Kingsport, TN 37662.
source: https://www.johnsoncitypress.com/watch-now-law-art-and-politics-among-domains-of-labor-lawyer-bruce-shine/article_3e707ae2-5885-11ec-8c15-67033ff8cf19.html
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