Michael Schumacher, a Wisconsin author known for biographies of film-maker Francis Ford Coppola and musician Eric Clapton, as well as accounts of Great Lakes shipwrecks, has died at the age of 75.
His daughter, Emily Joy Schumacher, confirmed on Monday that her father died on 29 December. She did not provide a cause of death.
Schumacher's varied works included Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life, Crossroads: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton, and Dharma Lion: A Biography of Allen Ginsberg, about the Beat generation poet. He also wrote biographies of basketball player George Mikan and comic-book pioneer Will Eisner.
Born in Kansas, Schumacher spent most of his life in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Michigan. He studied political science at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside but left one credit short of graduating, according to his daughter. He developed an early interest in writing and built two careers: one in biographies and another in Great Lakes history.
His maritime accounts included the sinking of the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975, a November 1913 storm that killed more than 250 sailors, and a 1958 storm on Lake Michigan in which four sailors fought to survive.
Emily Joy Schumacher described her father as “a history person” and “a good human”. She recalled that he wrote longhand in notebooks and later transcribed them on a typewriter. “He loved people. He loved talking to people. He loved listening to people. He loved stories,” she said.
