Remembering Skip Sheffield: Part 3
Editor’s Note: We will be honoring the life of Skip Sheffield throughout the week and will compile photos, stories, and memories of our beloved Entertainment Columnist. We have received photos, and letters like the one below since Saturday morning and we will begin to publish these online. We will print a special edition honoring Skip with some of his best stories, and letters like the one below. If you, or anyone you know, would like to share with us a story of you and Skip, please email us at pheizer@bocaratontribune.com. Send your photos, stories, and anything else you would like.
By: Wayne Tompkins
I remember reading Skip’s reviews in the Boca News as a teenager and instantly becoming a fan. Just through his writing, he seemed like a cool guy who really knew his stuff. I had no clue that a decade later I would have the honor of working with him for seven years – and calling him my friend.
Sitting at my desk in a tumultuous newsroom, I would watch Skip go about his life and work and think to myself “I want to be that guy.” Not because I particularly wanted to surf, or play in a band, or even rub shoulders with major and minor celebrities. What I longed for was his quiet confidence, that breezy joie de vivre, that aura of Zen-like calmness he brought to everything around him.
To put it more succinctly, the guy was totally cool.
Skip and Vin Mannix were the faces of that paper for most of its run – certainty through its heyday. But beyond that, Skip was in many ways the face of Boca Raton itself. He was one of the best known and best liked people in the city, a point brought home to me some years ago. I was traveling in western Argentina when I struck up a conversation with an Argentinian man and mentioned I was from Boca Raton.
“Boca?” the man replied. “You must know Skip Sheffield.”
It turns out he’d done a turn as an actor in South Florida years earlier before returning home.
Answering Skip’s phone when he was out was always an adventure. You never knew who would be on the other end of the line. “This is Steve Allen,” a familiar voice once announced. Another time, the inimitable Don Adams – Maxwell Smart himself – called looking for Skip. I remember Nancy, our receptionist, shrieking with joy: “I just talked to Blythe Danner!”
Skip once told he never felt the need to leave Boca because all the celebrities came to him. He had deeper roots here than that, of course, which led to his great work with the “Old Boca” Facebook sites that has created a wonderful community for us “Old Boca” types.
The last time I saw Skip was about four years ago, when the Sheffield Brothers were playing a gig at, of all places, the Spanish River library. The brothers never sounded better. Skip had been through a difficult couple of years, but things had finally turned around for him.
I’ve forgotten what we talked about, just small talk really, but it was great to see him back in good spirits and back to his old self.
Though it might have seemed to a neurotic young reporter that Skip was living the perfect life, I learned through memories he shared in his later writings that was far from the truth. Even so, he lived a fascinating and fulfilling journey that left those who knew him longing for more, and deeply saddened that it ended so soon.
Godspeed my friend.
