Friday, April 26, 2024
Micky Shearon, arguably one of the busiest people in the county, had a few days off this week, thanks to a surprise early Christmas present from his wife Beth.
Instead of being in his office Monday at the Hood County Justice Center, where he is court administrator for the county court-at-law, Shearon and his wife were on a Southwest flight bound for New York City and a Broadway performance of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Based on the 1960 novel by Harper Lee, the story of racial injustice is Shearon’s favorite book, movie and play. (An Academy-award winning adaptation of the novel starring Gregory Peck was released in 1962.)
An actor in his spare time and board president of the Granbury Theatre Company (GTC), Shearon has himself played the lead role of “Mockingbird’s” Great Depression-era lawyer, Atticus Finch.
Few would argue that Shearon’s three days in the Big Apple were a deserved respite from the busy schedule he keeps, and has always kept.
In November, he ended an 18-year run on the Granbury School Board, and he has served on the board of seemingly every organization in the county that serves the needs of children.
“He constantly reminds us of our moral duty to protect the most vulnerable among us,” said former Hood County resident Norma Wright, who founded Hood County Christmas for Children with Shearon’s help in 1996.
Wright’s description of Shearon also fits his hero, the fictional Finch.
In a famous line from the movie, the Reverend Sykes, who is black, gently instructs Finch’s 6-year-old daughter Scout to rise to her feet as her father exits the courtroom.
“Your father is passing,” Sykes tells the child, inferring that Finch is due great respect even though his attempts to achieve justice in a town full of racism failed.
Shearon’s efforts in Hood County haven’t managed to balance the scales of social justice between the haves and have-nots, but he has worked tirelessly to fill bellies and school backpacks, put presents under Christmas trees and mentor young people from dysfunctional or economically disadvantaged homes.
For these reasons, the Hood County News has named Shearon its 2018 Man of the Year.
ACTS OF KINDNESS
A native of Euless, Shearon has three daughters and two sons, all of whom are now grown. He has four grandchildren.
He was married previously, but Beth has been his wife since 1991.
Shearon was among a core group in the community that founded Mission Granbury after the 1997 rape and murder of 11-year-old Sarah Patterson. Bobby Wayne Woods was executed for that crime in Huntsville on Dec. 3, 2009.
In addition to Mission Granbury, the GTC, Hood County Christmas for Children (HCCFC) and Operation School Supplies, which he and Wright founded in 2001, Shearon has served on the boards of the Boys and Girls Club of Hood County, Ruth’s Place and Visit Granbury, Inc.
He was instrumental in starting the Healthy Kids summer lunch program, and served as the school board’s representative on the GISD Education Foundation. For five years, Shearon spearheaded Love Granbury, a county-wide good-deed initiative involving a collaboration of local churches.
Providing Christmas gifts for thousands of children was one of Shearon’s most intensive efforts on behalf of the community.
From 1996 to 2008, he and Wright shouldered the Herculean task of managing the volunteer-driven effort – raising the money needed, purchasing clothing and toys and then distributing the gifts to families.
Wright moved from Hood County in 2010. For the past several years, Jacque Gordon has served as HCCFC’s board president.
Wright said that Shearon is “an exceptional advocate for the children of Hood County.”
She said, “Everything he does is with the children in mind. He has the ability to see the problems and then know how to fix them.”
Shearon described his alignment with the like-minded Wright as a “harmonic convergence.” He is driven to help children partly because of memories of Steve, his boyhood friend.
“Steve never had nice clothes, he never had lunch hardly, and he would never have the school supplies that he needed,” Shearon said. “A lot of times the teachers would kind of berate him in class, and I know it made him feel terrible.”
Shearon believes there is more of an awareness now among teachers and school personnel about students whose families suffer from economic hardships.
GISD Public Information Officer Jeff Meador said that Shearon “is one of a kind.”
“It has been a privilege to know him and his family for 20 years,” Meador said. “In that time, we have recruited each other for new projects numerous times – always with the optimistic determination that ‘we can do this.’”
Meador, who has joined Shearon in serving on the GTC board, said that Shearon’s unselfishness “never wavers” and that no one has rivaled his level of service to the community.
“Area schoolchildren receive needed school supplies each year because of his commitment,” Meador said. “Most recently, he led our board to help Granbury Theatre Company grow from its infancy five years ago to a vibrant center for the arts and tourism for our community.”
SECOND ACT
With his years on the school board behind him, Shearon is free to focus more on the GTC, which had already been taking up a considerable amount of his free time.
He not only manages the theater company, but acts in many of its productions and serves as a mentor to young actors. At the start of almost every Friday, Saturday and Sunday performance, it is Shearon who walks onstage to greet the audience and thank sponsors.
Shearon acted in college, but abandoned the hobby once he had children to raise. He became involved with the GTC in 2012, and joined its board in 2014.
Under the current board’s leadership, the theater company has thrived, not only in terms of making money but in helping others make money as well. The GTC’s shows at the Granbury Opera House bring visitors to the square just about every weekend.
Over the past three years the theater has been “dark” just five weekends, Shearon said. During that time the number of season ticket holders has risen from 80-something to about 600, he said.
It was Shearon’s idea to bring in top-talent tribute bands to perform on weekends in between the GTC’s “Broadway on the Brazos” shows. The tribute bands are popular and, more often than not, the shows sell out.
GTC Business Manager Sara Baker said that merchants have been very happy, thanks, not only to the GTC, but to The New Granbury Live. Rather than competing, Shearon and Sam Houston, The New Granbury Live’s owner, have partnered to help promote both theaters as tourist attractions, she said.
Shearon has brought diversity to the Opera House through a variety of special shows, ranging from the recent ballet performance of “The Nutcracker” to comedy improvisations and illusionist acts, Baker said.
She noted that he also has a heart for struggling young actors, taking them under his wing. She and others affiliated with the GTC do so as well.
“He is passionate about these kids and making sure that they get an opportunity to showcase their skills, not just on stage, but if they want to learn how to be a stage manager or learn how to do costuming,” Baker said.
CLASS ACT
Shearon was upset last year when the city, for safety reasons, closed the old hospital building off the square known as the Opera House Dorm, evicting a host of young actors and stagehands.
Shearon was particularly heartbroken for one young man, who came from a family that had been evicted several times during his childhood.
Although Shearon didn’t agree with the city’s decisions on the Opera House Dorm and Visit Granbury, which the City Council de-funded in September, he has shown no ill will. In fact, he expressed empathy for elected officials who must make difficult decisions.
“It’s not going to do any good to come out and bash people for taking positions different from yours,” he said. “We live in a civil society.”
Shearon’s empathetic nature is something that County Court-at-Law Judge Vincent Messina noticed when he hired Shearon as his legal assistant in the mid-1990s when he was the managing partner in a local law firm.
“From the minute Micky joined our team I knew it was going to be a long-term relationship,” he said. “Not only did he possess a superior skill set from a legal standpoint, he possessed something entirely unique: the ability to empathize with our clients.”
Shearon carried that ability to the county court-at-law, where he followed Messina after Messina was elected to the bench in 2003.
“There is not a day that goes by that he is not confronted with a challenge of some kind from the public that we serve or the lawyers and their personnel that appear in this court,” the judge said.
“Micky approaches each challenge with the faith that he has carried all these years. Faith that illustrates that it is better to be humble than prideful, it’s better to show compassion rather than contempt, it’s better to be kind rather than to be unconcerned, it’s better to serve rather than to be served.”
Shearon, the judge stated, addresses everything he does with “a boundless loving heart” that is free of cynicism.
“Frankly,” he said, “working around him for all these years has truly made me a better person.”
kcruz@hcnews.com | 817-573-7066, ext. 258
