Robert Nelson Shigley, helped pioneer special education in Georgia

By J.E. Geshwiler

For the AJC

While an administrator with the Georgia Department of Education, Bob Shigley helped launch the Fernbank Science Center, managing its federal grants.

He also supervised the Governor's Honors Program, was responsible for teacher education and certification, and oversaw operations at Georgia's School for the Deaf in Cave Spring and the School for the Blind in Macon.

But what gave him the most satisfaction, said his son, Kenneth Shigley, an Atlanta attorney, was the growth and improvement of the state's special education system during his tenure.

"We were pioneers in the special education movement in Georgia," said Herb Nash of Lithonia, Mr. Shigley's assistant at the time and now a DeKalb County school counselor.

"In a few short years," Mr. Nash said, "we grew the number of special education teachers in the state from 875 to 8,500. Bob deserves a lot of credit for that for his work in defending the special education budget. He also helped establish a system of minibuses for special ed pupils."

Robert Nelson Shigley, 85, died of heart failure Thursday at Summers Landing assisted living community in Atlanta. His funeral will be at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Mentone (Ala.) Community Church. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the Children's Tumor Foundation, 95 Pine Street, 16th floor, New York, NY 10005. Nelson Funeral Home in Fort Payne, Ala., is in charge of arrangements.

Born in Mentone, Mr. Shigley, the son of a Wesleyan Methodist minister, left high school a year early to "fight the Nazis before the war ended," as he told his son.

Mr. Shigley, a waist gunner aboard a B-17 Flying Fortress, went on 36 bombing missions over German-held territory and Germany itself.

"These were harrowing missions," Kenneth Shigley said. "Once, his plane's bombs got stuck and Daddy had to crawl into the open bomb bay and ratchet them loose. Another time, his pilot had to make a forced landing in German-occupied Yugoslavia. Luckily, he and the rest of the crew made contact right away with Yugoslav partisans, and that enabled them to get back to their base in Italy."

After the war, Mr. Shigley went back to school, graduating from Furman University. He taught and served as principal at schools in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. After earning a doctorate in education at the University of Alabama, he became assistant Douglas County school superintendent before beginning his stint as a state school administrator in 1966.

In 1972 he returned to Douglas County as principal of its high school, at that time one of the largest in Georgia. Between 1974 and 1978 he was director of the Pioneer Regional Educational Services Agency, a support organization for 13 county school systems in northeast Georgia.

"Dad retired early and was ready for a new adventure. So when a former colleague called him from Alaska and told him of an educational opening, he jumped at it," said another son, Michael Shigley, a U.S. Navy fireman stationed in Charleston, S.C.

For a time in Alaska, Mr. Shigley supervised schools for native American and Inuit communities, some of them so remote he had to be flown there by bush plane.

"Dad had great rapport with those communities and gained their trust," Michael Shigley said. "They often gave him tokens of appreciation -- pen-and-ink drawings on animal hides, carvings made from walrus tusks and moose antlers, hand-woven baskets, Inuit-style moccasins, even fresh moose meat."

Mr. Shigley lived in Alaska 10 years, with his last post being school superintendent in Nome. In his second and final retirement, he returned to the mountains of Georgia, settling first in White County, then Habersham County.

Survivors also include three grandchildren.