Helen Jernigan Shine

She was born in Rocky Mount, NC, on December 29, 1933, to Helen Jones Jernigan and Ernest Casper Jernigan. She was first raised in Red Oak, a small farming village, where she and her two older sisters played on the school grounds where their father served as principal and helped their mother make peach pickles and gather fruit for jams and jellies. She later lived in Louisburg and Selma. In high school, she discovered her love for accounting and journalism, serving on the high school paper’s staff and as the Selma High football sports writer for the Smithfield Herald.

Helen was enamored with all kinds of sports from an early age. She even recalled sneaking away from piano practice to watch older children play, though she wisely hurried back before her mother, a piano teacher, returned from her lessons. She started playing basketball at the ripe old age of three, no doubt encouraged by her father, who coached all three of his daughters at one point or another, including during Helen’s freshman year of high school. Helen recounted her high school team’s greatest achievement as being selected to participate in a sixteen-team women’s basketball event at the NC State College Coliseum in Raleigh, where they handily beat their opponents. She attributed their victory to her teammate being a “great post player” and to the fact that she and another teammate “knew how to make shots from the perimeter.”

Helen later studied business and office education at the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina, now known as the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In her first year, she joined the Carolinian campus newspaper staff as part of the interview team. When she decided to visit home one weekend, she missed the chance to interview poet Robert Frost–an oversight she regretted for the rest of her life. Later, in her own words, she “redeemed” herself by interviewing the Ambassadors from India and Pakistan and pianist Arthur Rubinstein, all of whom she described as gracious subjects.

During the summer of 1953, Helen served as a counselor at Camp Greentop in Maryland, a camp for children with disabilities. The experience was an “epiphany” that cemented her lifelong dedication to advancing the well-being of people with disabilities. She recalled a memorable visit from President Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie, who were staying just down the road at Camp David. The visit delighted both the children and the counselors.

She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Secretarial Administration from WCUNC in 1956 and began her teaching career in Morehead City, where she was entrusted with establishing the high school’s first Business Department. Her favorite extracurricular activity was coaching the high school women’s basketball team. Like her father before her, she was surely very good at it, as illustrated by her selection to coach at a statewide All-Star women’s basketball event. In 1959, she met and fell in love with Jimmy Shine, another teacher. They married in June 1960.

After moving to New Bern, she worked for a time at the Craven County Tax Department, Newport High School (teaching English, US History, and Public Speaking), Brinson Memorial School (teaching Language Arts and Social Studies), and finally New Bern High School (teaching Typing and Accounting), where she was fortunate to have had the opportunity to teach all three of her children. When her oldest child, Mary, accidentally called her “Mama” instead of “Mrs. Shine” in the classroom, she thereafter became affectionately known to her students as “Mama Shine.” She served diligently as advisor for the school’s Future Business Leaders of America club and the yearbook, leading her students to a first-place award for “best all-around yearbook” in their division. Helen loved her students and enjoyed teaching immensely until her retirement in May 1992, after which she and Jimmy delighted in gardening, traveling, and spending time with their beloved family.

Helen’s husband, Jimmy, had a deep love for travel, and she dearly loved accompanying him. Their adventures swept them off to forty-eight states and many countries, including Australia, the Bahamas, Canada, Egypt, England, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. After Jimmy’s passing, she enjoyed traveling vicariously from the comfort of her home by watching Rick Steves’ programs.

As a member of the New Bern Civitan Club for over thirty years, Helen devoted countless volunteer hours at the local, area, district, and international levels. She worked alongside her husband, Jimmy, as he served in every club office from treasurer to distinguished president, and together they attended sixteen Civitan International Conventions. Throughout her many years of service, she also held multiple offices and served on several committees. Her fellow Civitans honored her with two Civitan of the Year awards (2006-2007 and 2014-2015), the Junior Civitan International Foundation Fellow, and the NC District East Foundation Scholarship Fellow. She also carried out her commitment to community service as a member of the Beta Sigma Theta Sorority, a service-based organization, and through her support of the Craven County Special Olympics and Special Olympics North Carolina.

Helen was a devoted member of Christ Episcopal Church in New Bern, a community she cherished, for nearly seventy years. She joyfully served as a Sunday School teacher, trained and organized docents (a role she was particularly passionate about, given her deep knowledge of and fascination with the Church’s history), helped organize the Church’s first cookie walk fundraiser in 1998, and volunteered for that and many other annual Church events, including the Pumpkin Patch, a community favorite. She attended the East Carolina Diocesan Cursillo #43 weekend at Trinity Center and has since served on many more Cursillo Teams.

Helen was a lifelong, passionate Carolina Tar Heel. Her father, a 1923 UNC graduate, sparked her love of the Heels by whisking her off to football games in Chapel Hill on Saturdays. They tailgated on the old Navy Field, eating fried chicken and other fixin’s her mother had woken up early to make, and cheered on Charlie "Choo Choo" Justice from their seats in the end zone. She was an avid UNC basketball fan, rooting for the Tar Heels on TV and occasionally at the Dean Dome in Chapel Hill with her daughter, Elizabeth. She also supported Jimmy’s favorite team, the East Carolina Pirates, and for many years attended football games at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium in Greenville with him, their daughter Mary, and their son Jamey.

Helen was a voracious reader, a great enthusiast of murder mysteries and detective dramas, a gifted cook and baker, and an endlessly warm, kind, and generous spirit.

With Helen’s passing, she is reunited with Jimmy, her husband of 47 years, her parents, and her sisters, Peggy Jernigan Hawks and Suzanne Jernigan Proctor.

She is lovingly remembered by her children, Mary Shine Williams; Elizabeth Shine Peele and husband, Bo; and James Francis Shine III and wife, Missy; and by her granddaughters, Amanda Caroline Peele, Katelyn Nicole Williams, and Kendall Rose Shine.

There will be a memorial service in celebration of her life at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, October 17, at Christ Episcopal Church, performed by the Rev. H. Paul Canady III and the Rev. Deacon Lisa Kirby of Christ Episcopal Church of New Bern. A reception and visitation with the family will immediately follow the service.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in honor of Helen’s legacy of service to the Boys and Girls Home of North Carolina, https://boysandgirlshomes.org/donate.html the Civitan International Research Center, https://securelb.imodules.com/s/1881/giving19/interior.aspx?sid=1881&gid=3&pgid=481&cid=1223&bledit=1&dids=5139.4265.4340.4434 or Christ Episcopal Church https://www.christchurchnewbern.com/give

Arrangements by Cotten Funeral Home and Crematory, New Bern.