Central Texas lost one of its great servants this week, and I lost one of mine.
Mrs. Jean Shine, Civilian Aide Emeritus to the Secretary of the Army and one of the most respected real estate leaders Central Texas has ever produced, passed away on Sunday at the age of 79. For those who knew her only by title, those titles tell you a great deal. For those of us fortunate enough to know her personally, they barely scratch the surface.
I met Mrs. Shine as a high school kid with more ambition than resources and a plan to attend Baylor University through Army ROTC. She believed in that plan before anyone else had a reason to. It was through her advocacy that I received the scholarship that made Baylor possible, and it was through her steady mentorship that I stayed the course long enough to commission as an officer in the Texas Army National Guard. I would not be an Army officer today without her. That is a plain fact, and I have said it often, but I want to say it now in public.
You could write the history of the last two decades of Central Texas by tracing her fingerprints. The families she helped put down roots in Harker Heights, Killeen, and every community in between, one home at a time, over a real estate career that shaped this region’s growth as much as any single person’s. The soldier families she quietly helped through hard seasons. The veterans she made sure were remembered, most visibly through her tireless work with Wreaths Across America at the Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery, where what began as a handful of wreaths grew, under her insistence, into a covering for every grave. The causes she funded. The young people she pulled forward, one at a time, because she thought they were worth pulling.
What made her extraordinary was not the scale of the work. It was the fact that she treated every person she met as if they were the whole point of the day. Soldiers, students, first-time homebuyers, waitresses, dignitaries, the volunteer setting up chairs before an event she was speaking at. Everyone got the same warmth, the same eye contact, the same sense that Jean Shine was genuinely glad to know them. In a public life full of performance, hers was the real thing.
To her family, thank you for sharing her with the rest of us for as long as you did. You gave up hours and weekends and holidays so that other people’s sons and daughters could have a champion in Central Texas. That was a gift, and it did not go unnoticed.
To the community she built and served, we owe her the only tribute she would actually want, which is to keep doing the work. Show up for a soldier’s family. Sponsor a wreath. Welcome a new neighbor to the block. Mentor a kid who has no obvious reason to succeed and then watch what happens when someone tells them they can. That was her ministry, and it is now ours to continue.
Mrs. Shine, thank you. For the scholarship, for the phone calls, for the belief, and for the thousand small kindnesses I watched you extend to people who could do nothing for you in return. Central Texas is a better place because you lived here. I am a better man because you knew me.
Rest easy. We’ve got it from here.