PROFILES IN AMERICAN HISTORY
and
Shepherd
World Educational Foundation
1937 - 2002
Born in Mexico City on October 3, 1937, John Snyder Blaise Shepherd, a/k/a Dudley Eugene Blaise y Snyder, was the son of Dudley Eugene Blaise, mining engineer, and of Clara Olive Snyder Blaise Shepherd, civic leader. He was the grandson of Oklahoma oilman Eugene F. Blaise and of Joplin, Missouri bus line founder John A. Snyder (native of Ashtabula, Ohio, Muncie, Indiana and Piqua, Ohio).
John’s father
abandoned the family while he was still an infant. His mother remarried in 1949
to Charles Maynard Shepherd, a native of England and treasurer of the Empire
District Electric Power Co. in Joplin, who committed suicide in 1955.
He was a great
great grandson of Hungarian-American Lawyer and Professor Ignace Hainer and of
Charles Merriman, Ashtabula, Ohio. He was also a great great grandson of
Rachael Ormerod Swift and James E. Swift, Caudersport, Penn.
John Shepherd
was graduated from Columbia Elementary School and Joplin High School in
Missouri, where he was selected to be a member of the National Honor Society,
to be editor of The Spyglass, to be a member of the debate team
and to be a captain in the Reserve Officers Training Corps. A member of the Boy
Scouts of America, he served as a Cub Scout den chief and as an assistant
scoutmaster from the age of 13 until he graduated from high school. He ultimately achieved the rank of star
scout. He also served as an altar boy and an officer of the Young Peoples
Service League at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church.
During his high school
and college years John was employed as a photographer for Tom Korn Studios. He
was also employed as a commercial newspaper photographer and as a commercial
newspaper editor in Joplin.
During college,
he worked as a radio newscaster for a Springfield radio station, and as a
television production assistant for KTTS-TV in Springfield, Missouri.
John Shepherd
worked as a lifeguard for the Southwest Missouri State University athletic
department and as a dormitory counselor at the University of Oklahoma.
Considered an
outstanding archer, he placed second in a Southwest Missouri men’s archery
tournament at the age of 18.
During the
summertime, he worked as a counselor at a dude ranch in Michigan and at Boy
Scout Camp Ni-Ka-Ga-Ha in Missouri, where he served as an archery instructor,
as a canoeing instructor and as a water safety instructor.
Following
graduation from Joplin High School, John majored in psychology, political
science and Spanish at Joplin Junior College, at Kansas State University in
Pittsburg and at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield. He was
awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration and finance
from the University of Oklahoma in Norman.
While attending
SMSU and employed by KTTS-TV in Springfield, he independently created and
packaged a television show called The Home Show, to be hosted by
Robert Heater and Beth Tudor. Unable to find a sponsor for the show, he
enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1962, where he served as a Spanish interpreter to
the Adjutant General at Fort Bliss.
Following his discharge from the Army, he underwent three
surgeries for a benign although massive brain tumor (that affected his hearing
and his balance nerve). The surgeries were performed at St. Francis Hospital in
Tulsa in 1966, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester in 1966, and at Parkland
Hospital in Dallas in 1978. During his surgery at the Mayo Clinic he suffered a
stroke, which left him with paralysis of facial muscles, periodic seizures and
disorientation and other serious complications. He expired April 2, 2002 at a
Cox Hospital in Springfield, Missouri, following pneumonia contracted at Cox
Hospital and a fatal seizure a few days later.
American Educator – Journalist–
Philosopher
Born in 1938,
Thomas Mitchell (Blaise) Shepherd is the son of Clara Olive Snyder Blaise
Shepherd and the stepson of Charles Maynard Shepherd. He is the grandson of
Mabel Mitchell Snyder and John Abbott Benham Snyder, Missouri bus line owners
and plow manufacturers. He is also a grandson of Tulsa banker, oil baron E.
F. Gene Blaise. He is a great grandson of Olive Exermina Merriman Benham
Snyder and Orson Hamlin Benham (Ashtabula, Ohio).
He attended the
School of Philosophy and Letters of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
México, the University of Missouri, American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New
York City, Crowder Community College, where he majored in building construction
technology, and the School of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate College of the
University of Oklahoma, where he majored in regional and city planning.
Mr. Shepherd served as a director of
media research for public television. He also served as a planning consultant
to the Ozark Gateway Regional Planning Commission and Law Enforcement
Assistance Council in Missouri. He founded Blaise Publishing Enterprises at San
Diego in 1969. His first publication was The Investor’s Handbook on Mexico,
published in 1970.
Mr. Shepherd founded Thomas of LaJolla
Furniture, Etc. at Del Mar, California in 1969. He is also an actor, an
architectural designer, a craftsman, and a small homebuilder.
Tom. Shepherd is the author of An
Existential Approach to Sound Mental Health, An Existential
Approach to Sober Living, The Schizophregenic Society, The
Crime of Psychiatry, The Conscience of an Existentialist
and other publications. He is the founder-chancellor of the Shepherd-Montessori Institute.
John Abbott Snyder
Snyder Bus Line
Joplin,
Missouri
Born in 1878 at
Ashtabula, Ohio and reared in Muncie, Indiana and Piqua, Ohio, John Abbott
Snyder was the son of Olive Exermina Merriman Snyder and Orson Hamlin Benham
(Ashtabula, Ohio). He was the adopted stepson of Andrew Griffin Snyder, Piqua,
Ohio industrialist and a nephew of William A. Snyder, Piqua industrialist and
of Abbott L. Johnson, Ohio and Indiana industrialist.
Mr. Snyder was
superintendent of the Blaine Harrow Manufacturing Co. in Piqua. He later
co-founded the Galena Harrow Factory at Galena, Kansas in 1909 and he founded
the J.A. Snyder Transportation Company ( to include Snyder Bus Line and Snyder
Rent-A-Car and Snyder-Studebaker Motor Car Co.) at Joplin, Missouri in 1914. He
was one of the first members of the Joplin Chamber of Commerce and Joplin
Rotary Club. He was a member of the board of directors of the First State Bank
of Joplin. He was also a 30th Degree Scottish Rite Mason and a
member of the First Presbyterian Church.
Mr. Snyder died
in March 1931 at the age of 55. He was survived by his mother, Olive Merriman
Snyder, Muncie, Indiana, a brother, W.C. Benham, Muncie, and his wife, Mabel
Mitchell Snyder and his daughter Clara Olive Snyder of the home, 412 North
Moffet Ave., Joplin.
1906 – 1976
Born February 16, 1906 at Piqua, Ohio, Clara Olive was the
daughter of Missouri-Arkansas bus line owners John Abbott Snyder and Mabel
Mitchell Snyder.
She was graduated from National Park Seminary, Forest Glen,
Maryland in 1926.
In 1934 she married Dudley Eugene Blaise, a mining engineer
connected with the Admiralty Zinc Company at Joplin, Missouri and with the El
Cedro Silver Mining Company at Guanajuato, Mexico, which he headed as
president.
After she transferred stocks she had inherited from her
father and grandmother into her husband’s name, he deserted her and their two
infant sons in early 1939. Clara Olive was awarded a divorce on grounds of
desertion in 1949. Dudley Blaise was at the time residing in La Paz, Bolivia,
where (it was reported to her by the State Department) he was employed as a
mining engineer by the Patino Tin Company. He was also reported to be living
with and supporting another woman, Miss Alice Jordan, a former resident of
Hollywood and Glendale, California, by whom he had sired a third child
following his desertion of Clara Olive and their two sons. Mr. Blaise and Miss
Jordan (who majored in sociology and social work USC) never made restitution to
Clara Olive.
On December 3, 1949 she married Charles Maynard Shepherd, a
native of England and New York City. Mr. Shepherd, a former accountant for
Cities Service Company in New York and vice president of the Ohio River Power
Company was at the time director and treasurer of the Empire District Electric
Company, headquartered in Joplin. Mr. Shepherd died of drowning as a result of
an apparent suicide during a business trip to Washington, D. C. and New York
City in May 1955.
Following Mr. Shepherd’s death, Clara Olive’s cousin Grace
Johnson Davis, whose father, brother and husband founded Borg-Warner
Corporation, established a trust fund for her, as she had become severely
crippled as a result of arthritis and as a result of negligent surgery she
underwent at St. John’s Hospital in Joplin to replace an arthritic hip in 1962,
which surgery left her without any hip and with the operated leg 4 inches
shorter than it had been prior to surgery. The trust fund netted her a
quarterly dividend of approximately $80.00 up until her death in 1976.
Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed in Clara Olive’s behalf by
Attorney Edward Farmer and settled out of court several years later by
Attorneys Lloyd Roberts & Jack Fleischaker for a mere $400.00.
Clara Olive Shepherd was later pressured into selling the
home her father had purchased for his family in 1920 in order to pay off
accumulated debts as a direct result of the negligent manner in which her
medical problems were handled by her attorneys. Attorney Jack Fleischaker, by
the way, attached a lein on Clara Olive Shepherd’s home in order to collect
attorney fees.
John W. Scott of Spencer, Scott & Dwyer was general
counsel for St. John’s Hospital.
During World War II, Clara Olive was employed at Camp
Crowder, a U.S. Army base in Neosho, Missouri, and at Spencer Chemical Co. in
Kansas. Following the war she was employed as an office assistant to Dr. Sam
Grantham, a Joplin physician. She also worked for Kay Chandler as a producer
and director of musical revues, sponsored by women’s clubs and men’s civic
organizations throughout the USA during the 1940s.
She was residential chairman of Joplin’s first Cancer
Crusade and she served as a member of the board of directors for the Jasper
County Missouri Heart Association, of the Joplin Woman’s Club, of the Joplin
Little Theater and of the Tri-State Writer’s Guild. She was also a member of
the Tri-State Weavers Guild.
She died at a Tulsa hospital as a result of secondary
surgical procedures while undergoing orthopedic surgery to replace an arthritic
knee joint. The surgeon was James E. White, M. D. The negligent
anesthesiologist was a Dr. Moroney.
She was survived by two sons, Thomas Mitchell Blaise
Shepherd, with whom she made her home during the last year of her life, and
John Snyder Blaise Shepherd.
Thomas has since founded the free online
Shepherd-Montessori Institute.
The Shepherd Montessori Institute
VIEW
PHOTOS OF CLARA OLIVE SHEPHERD & FAMILY HERE
Charles Strout Davis Jr.
industrialist – playwright - novelist
Born in Muncie, Indiana, Charles Strout Davis Jr. is the
son of Florence Grace Johnson Davis and of Charles Strout Davis Sr., founder
and president of the Borg-Warner Corporation. He is a graduate of the Choate
School and Princeton University with a degree in engineering. Among numerous
works, he has authored two plays, Practice to Deceive, starring
Dorothy Malone (1981), and The Beekeeper, starring Rebecca
Trotsky (1984).
His first novel,
Allegiances, published in 2001 by the Merriman Press, is an epic
adventure set in 1861. Over ten years in the making, the novel was born out of
his intense interest in determining the root causes of international wars and
the track of the famous yacht, America, during the Civil War.
In 1945, he
received the prestigious Naval Ordnance Development Award for his work on the
first lock-on-target radar-controlled naval gun director, Mark 61, which is
credited for stopping the Japanese kamikaze attacks on our navy aircraft
carriers.
For twenty-five
years, a director and executive of Borg-Warner Corporation, he took early
retirement to devote full time to writing. An avid sailor, he has cruised the Great
Lakes and the Caribbean extensively. Mr. Davis and his wife live in Fort
Lauderdale, Florida. He has two children and three grandchildren.
Allegiances can
be purchased at Amazon.com.
