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Sharon Schuman, 79, of Eugene, was killed April 23 when a car hit her while she was running on the Amazon Trail. A professional violinist and retired professor at the University of Oregon, Schuman was beloved by friends and family and known for her dedication to music groups and nonprofits in Eugene and Springfield.
Sharon Schuman had boundless energy.
One career was not enough for her; she had two at the same time. Schuman was a professional violinist for more than 40 years. And she was a professor at the University of Oregon’s Clark Honors College, where she taught literature, from 1995 until 2007. Earlier, she had taught at Willamette University.
She was also an athlete, dedicated to running, cycling and hiking.
Schuman was running on the Amazon Trail on the morning of April 23, when a vehicle jumped the curb, crossed over the grass between the road and the trail, and struck Schuman, killing her. She was 79.
In the wake of her sudden death, friends and family in Eugene and beyond are mourning her loss.
“She definitely lived a full life,” said Ben Schuman, her son. “But she still had a lot left to give.”
In 2008, Schuman cofounded a chamber music group, Chamber Music Amici, which was the resident performing arts ensemble at The Wildish Theater in Springfield. She was a violinist.
“She was a force of nature when it came to concepts, ideas, organization and actually getting her ideas accomplished,” said her friend Steven Pologe, who was a cellist in the group and one of the original musicians.
Pologe was in the audience Saturday night at the Cascade Manor theater, where Chamber Music Amici made a point of giving concerts for senior citizens residing there. Performing for students was also part of the group’s mission.
On the program that night were Shostakovich’s piano quintet, and “The Rooster & The Fox,” a sextet for bassoon, piano, string quartet and a narrator. Schuman commissioned it from local composer, Colin Pip Dixon, and it was based on a segment of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales.”
“Sharon is a mover, she comes up with ideas and actually implements them,” Polege said. “It was a wonderful music project.”
Balancing careers
When Schuman’s two children, Ben and his sister, Rebecca, were growing up, they saw their mother nurturing her two careers. She would squeeze in practice time whenever she could.
“She was really good at balancing the obligations of being a parent as well as having a full professional career in teaching with being a musician, and part of that was practicing whenever she had the chance,” Ben Schuman said. “But that just seemed very normal to us. She’s always been a person who’s super-busy.”
Schuman was a delightful grandmother to three grandchildren, ages 8, 10 and 11.
Ben Schuman lives in Austin, Texas, with his two children, and they didn’t get to see their grandmother too often. When they did, they “lit up,” he said.
They loved playing a game called “Mistake Lullaby.” Sharon Schuman would play her violin and they would fall to the ground when she made a mistake.
“She would write books with the kids,” Ben Schuman said. “She’d use this website called StoryJumper to write these really intricate stories with them, and you illustrate it, and you upload it, and then they send it to you in the mail later. She loved doing that.”
Sharon Schuman’s death “left a huge hole in the community,” said Dan Bryant, public advocacy director of SquareOne Village, which provides cost-effective shelter options to help people who have been unhoused.
Schuman was the longest-serving member of SquareOne’s board of directors, having volunteered for 10 years. She was a tireless advocate and fundraiser.
“My gosh, what an incredible contribution she made over the 10 years,” Bryant said.
Schuman also was dedicated to the Fanconi Cancer Foundation, giving violin performances to raise money, and she organized the writings of her late husband, David Schuman, a judge and UO law professor, into a book. Extra funds went to establishing the David Schuman legal justice fellowship, for a UO law student, at the Wayne Morse Center.
In March, Sharon Schuman organized a concert to permanently endow the fellowship.
“She was a force of nature,” said Rebecca Dunwoodie, the co-director of the Wayne Morse Center. “She had so much energy and she reached out to her network of friends and former colleagues, and she had happy energy and excited energy, and she was always moving forward on these projects.”
Schuman’s vigor was a recurring theme.
“She was always trying to accomplish something, whether it was a performance, preparing for a class, writing a book, raising money for a nonprofit, completing a half marathon, winning her age division, doing some activities with the kids,” Ben Schuman said.
She ran the Boston Marathon in 1996 (finishing in 4 hours, 14 minutes) and completed Eugene’s challenging Butte to Butte 10K in 2023, at age 77.
Sharon Schuman was in the process of winding down her professional violin career, but had a full schedule of concerts this spring. Her loyal cairn terrier, Billy Budd, liked lying at Schuman’s feet while she practiced, fiercely protective of her.
The plan was for Chamber Music Amici to honor her with the final concert of the season in June.
“It was to be her final concert as a musician,” Polege said. “It’s heartbreaking. We were going to honor her — with her alive to be honored.”
Mike McInally contributed to this report.
Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled the name of Sharon Schuman’s dog. The dog’s name is Billy Budd, after the Herman Melville character.
