Daily Camera guest opinion: Guest Jessica Barraco: Jim Sheeler showed me how to honor people in life and in death

Oct. 30—By Jessica Barraco

Not everyone gets to take a reporting class from a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. It wasn't until the tail end of our first class that my adjunct professor at the University of Colorado, Jim Sheeler, let us know that he had recently won the award for a phenomenal, haunting article called, "Final Salute." He even looked a little nervous to be telling us, so humble even in his glory days.

Jim was soft-spoken, he wasn't going to school you. However, he was going to direct you on how to respectfully dig for the truth, playing companion to your subject. He recommended we go out into the eclectic community of Boulder and look for various elements that spoke not to our interests, but to that line right outside of our comfort zone. Jim expected us to do our research beforehand, reading books, articles and studying up before the interviews came.

For me that was writing about a Quaker meeting, spending 40 minutes in total silence, and also interviewing a former rookie detective on the JonBenét Ramsey case who was still working on the Boulder police force. But my greatest challenge came from a profile on a woman who was regularly haunted at the Hotel Boulderado, throughout the 30 years she worked there, starting as a maid in college and rising the ranks to head of sales.

I recall Jim ending each class with a nugget of sheer journalism genius. One night it was about getting your ending. I approached Jim's desk, letting him know I had a lot of good content on the Boulderado story but sadly did not have my punchy ending. He told me, "Go back, go back and keep talking with her. Your ending will reveal itself to you." No truer words would ever be spoken to me.

I went back the next day, handheld recorder switched on, ready for anything. Some more of the same content, more spooky stories; it did really seem like she was touched by the supernatural. Then it happened. She put down her glass of water and said, "I'm going to be a ghost here someday." My magical ending, revealed in an instant, all because Jim said to keep her talking.

When Jim called me to his desk after class the following week, handing me my A-minus on the story that I was so proud of, he said, "I think you can get this published by a local paper given the seasonal timing of Halloween." At first, I wasn't computing what he was suggesting: I could get published? In a real paper? With this story?

I pitched local papers and eventually, The Denver Post ran my story. The smile on Jim's face when I told him; the way he showed me the Oct. 29 paper he bought with my name on it. My childhood dream come true — on steroids — a published writer encouraged to become one by a Pulitzer Prize winner, who was also the most warm-hearted professor I would ever have.

The icing on the cake is that not only did Jim encourage me to believe in myself in a matter of a few short weeks, but his overall message of honoring people's stories in life and death propelled me to write my book right after college, "The Butterfly Groove," an investigative memoir about my late mother's mysterious youth. Jim was the serendipitous validation I needed throughout my life, since I lost my mom when I was 12, to give me the courage to ask the questions that allowed me to really know my mom — long after she was gone.

I had recently relocated to Boulder with my family and planned on reaching out to Jim to give him an update on my life and see how he was doing. Sadly, I never got the chance. Jim left this world in September, dying at his home in Ohio at the age of 53, so close to the age of my own mom when she died.

When I heard the news, I thought of his young son, a similar age to me when I lost my mom. I know he will have the opportunity to get to know parts of his dad he may not have known well, not only through Jim's writing but through the people who knew him in different aspects of his life — maybe even from this article. After all, Jim wasn't an ordinary journalist. He had dedicated his life to capturing the intricate stories of people, and after learning about someone's life, as Jim so keenly taught us, no one was ordinary.

"A lot of my stories are about the people, the things and the legacies that remain — it's not necessarily about what's gone, but what's still there. The stories that they continue to tell," Jim Sheeler is quoted saying in a Deadbeat article with the title "Jim Sheeler on learning lessons from the dead."

Jim is still offering nuggets, and I'm going to keep listening.

Jessica Barraco is the author of The Butterfly Groove: A Mother's Mystery, A Daughter's Journey, and a college essay counselor. She graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder's School of Journalism and Mass Communication and her work has been published in Elite Daily, 944, The Denver Post, TheDailyMeal, ModernLoss and more.