Professor’s family seemed happier than most, photographer recalls

They were not a typical family.

“I photograph normal all the time,” said Danielsville photographer and artist Robert Lowery, who, in 2005, shot family portraits for University of Georgia professor George Zinkhan and the wife he’s accused of killing.

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Robert Lowery/Lowery Studio

Photographer Robert Lowery shot this portrait of George Zinkhan and his wife, Marie Bruce, in 2005. ‘They seemed to be a super close, super nice family,’ Lowery said.

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“They were happier than normal,” Lowery said of the extended brood that included Zinkhan’s three adult children from a previous marriage and a young daughter and son born to the academic and his late wife, Marie Bruce, an Athens attorney.

Lowery met Bruce through their involvement with the Athens Community Theatre. On Saturday afternoon, witnesses say, Zinkhan shot and killed his 47-year-old spouse and two others: Ben Teague, 63, and Thomas Cole Tanner, 40.

Bruce had represented Lowery in a legal matter. The photographer returned the favor by shooting the family portraits planned by Bruce.

“They seemed to be a super close, super nice family,” Lowery said. Zinkhan was reserved but “seemed like a cool guy,” the photographer recalled.

Bruce, her two stepsons and one stepdaughter interacted effortlessly, Lowery said. “The whole family did, and the photos reflect that.”

The pictures were shot in black and white, per Bruce’s instructions. “I remember her saying they don’t get a lot of pictures taken, so this was a big thing for her,” Lowery said.

Now the youngest have lost their mother. All five of Zinkhan’s children are left to wonder what will become of their father, who remains at large.

Athens-Clarke County Police Capt. Clarence Holeman said it’s possible Zinkhan has taken his own life. Holeman also acknowledged the possibility that the 57-year-old educator may have fled to the Netherlands; Zinkhan is on the faculty of a university in Amsterdam and owns a home there.

Neighbor Bob Covington said Zinkhan had planned to summer overseas, as had become his routine. Typically Bruce and their two children would join him for a week or two, but most of their time was spent close to the family’s Bogart home.

Bruce was the extrovert, friends and neighbors say. Zinkhan, while not disagreeable, rarely engaged in small talk, Covington said.

Colleagues and students remember him in much the same way. He was intelligent and withdrawn — some considered him an eccentric, others, merely ordinary.

“We are shocked by the shooting our colleague Zinkhan seems to be involved in,” said Harmen Verbuggen, dean of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam School of Economics and Business Administration. Zinkhan is a part-time marketing professor there.

“He stayed with us for a couple of months, as a kind of a sabbatical” in 2006, Verbruggen wrote in an e-mail. “Our cooperation was so successful that we invited him to join our faculty on a part time basis.”

He seemed most comfortable communicating in verse, said Charles Hofacker, a Florida State University business professor who edited a collection of Zinkhan’s poetry for a Web page of the American Marketing Association.

“You don’t run across poetry that deals with academic subjects,” Hofacker said. “I thought it was kind of unique. It was worthy of publishing.”

Zinkhan was active in the association and regularly reached out to colleagues, Hofacker said.

Zinkhan, according to various academic profiles, grew up in Baltimore. He graduated in 1974 from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and, after earning his doctorate from the University of Michigan, taught at the universities of Pittsburgh and Houston before joining the UGA faculty in 1994.

Georgia students had mixed opinions of their professor, who was relieved of his duties following Saturday’s murders.

“Witty guy, some information useful,” wrote one former student on ratemyprofessors.com, a site popular with undergrads. “But he demonstrated himself to be cold hearted and just plain nasty when I needed help. Stay away from this man.”

Hofacker recalled a gentler soul.

The two recently attended a marketing conference at Texas A&M. At a reception afterward, Zinkhan retreated to a piano in the corner.

“He was very understated,” Hofacker said. “He played lovely piano music for about a half hour. It made everything pleasant.”