Center presents award named for ex-reporter

By NATE HUBBARD

A former Enterprise reporter continues to leave his mark in the Virginia legal and anti-poverty communities even after his sudden death from cancer in 2007.
Last week at the annual Legal Aid Conference in Williamsburg, the Virginia Poverty Law Center presented its second John Kent Shumate Jr. Advocate of the Year Awards to one attorney and one non-attorney from a statewide pool of candidates.
According to information from the VPLC and newspaper archives, Shumate wrote for the Enterprise from 1993 to 1995, before embarking on a legal and political career that included service on the center’s Board of Directors from 2004 until his death in August 2007.
“He obviously was very committed to this center and he was a very loyal board member,” said Jay Speer, the VPLC’s executive director.
Shumate, the son of Janey and John Kent Shumate Sr., grew up in Wythe County and graduated from Fort Chiswell High School in 1989.
Speer said Shumate’s first interaction with the VPLC, which advocates for low-income Virginia residents, came when Shumate served as a center intern while he was a law school student at the University of Richmond, from which he graduated in 2001.
Although Speer said he was supposed to be Shumate’s mentor, he said their relationship worked in reverse when it came to politics.
Between working as reporter and entering law school, Shumate helped run several political campaigns and served as an aide to Congressman Rick Boucher.
After getting his law degree, Shumate served as a lawyer for the State Corporation Commission, which oversees and regulates various businesses around the state.
“We worked a lot of the same issues,” Speer said about the VPLC and Shumate’s day job. “We were often on the same side.”
Janey Shumate agreed that her son’s worldview fit well with the VPLC’s mission.
“John was always interested in the underdog,” she said. “He liked people who needed representation to get it.”
In 2008, the first year the awards were given out in Shumate’s honor, Speer said the center got so many worthy nominees that they decided to give out an award both to an attorney and a non-attorney.
This year, one of the awards went to a Southwest Virginia resident for the first time as the center presented the attorney honor to Abingdon lawyer Barry Proctor. The 2009 non-attorney Shumate award went to Ruth Micklem, the co-director of the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance.
Janey said she and her husband, who still reside in Wythe County, found out shortly after John’s death that the VPLC planned to establish an award in their son’s honor.
“It was very thrilling,” she said. “He was very dedicated to them.”
Janey said many people who do work for the poor are often unsung heroes – something she said she thought her son would be pleased to hear has been rectified (at least once a year) by the center establishing an award.
“I can’t think of anything better,” she said. “He would be amazed and delighted that people are being honored.”
Nate Hubbard can be reached at 228-6611 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).