|
By Sharron Hannon
shannon@uga.edu
Friends and colleagues of Peabody Awards Director Barry L. Sherman filled Hodgson Hall for a  May 5 memorial service where he was remembered for his passionate commitment to his work and to his family--his wife, Candy Sherman, assistant director of student activities at UGA, and his two children.
Sherman, 47, a telecommunications professor in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, died at Athens Regional Medical Center May 2 after collapsing during a lunchtime basketball game at the Ramsey Student Center.
Sherman had served as director of the Peabody Awards since 1991. He said he considered the Peabody directorship a “sacred trust.” From his Grady College office he oversaw all aspects of the program, from issuing the call for entries to orchestrating the New York awards ceremony each May.
The Grady College has administered the Peabody Awards program since its creation in 1940. The university’s main library houses all of the entries received through the years and the Peabody Archives are a prized source of historical records on the broadcast industry.
News of Sherman’s death just weeks before the May 22 Peabody Awards ceremony stunned the broadcast industry as well as the university community. “Barry Sherman was the heart and soul of the Peabody Awards,” said Sheila Nevins, executive vice president for original programming at HBO and a recipient this year of a personal Peabody Award for lifetime achievement. “When Barry called you to say you had won a Peabody, you knew you had done something really special. He is irreplaceable.”
UGA President Michael F. Adams praised Sherman for guiding the Peabody program “with dignity and distinction. He possessed a unique ability to work well with academia, the entertainment community and a host of administrative details. It’s very difficult to think about the Peabody Awards without Barry Sherman.”
J. Thomas Russell, dean of the Grady College, said Sherman was “a superb scholar and skillful administrator who extended the visibility and prestige of the Peabody program during his tenure as director.”
Sherman joined the Grady College in 1981 after teaching journalism history at Western Michigan University and Pennsylvania State University. A scholar of broadcast history, he said he was drawn to UGA by the opportunity to use the Peabody Archives for research. He immediately became involved in the Peabody Awards program and was named associate director in 1984.
During his tenure as director he arranged popular exhibitions of material from the Peabody Archives at the Museum of Radio and Television in New York, the Louis Wolfson II Media History Center in Miami, the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago and the American Film Institute in Los Angeles.
One of Sherman’s major initiatives was starting a fund-raising campaign to create an endowment for the Peabody program.
Sherman taught a graduate course in media management and an undergraduate introductory course in telecommunications and had written textbooks for both classes. He headed the telecommunications department at UGA from 1987 to 1991, when he was named director of the Peabody program.
The International Radio and Television Society Foundation named Sherman a Stanton Fellow in 1995 for his “outstanding contribution to electronic media education.” The next year, he was invited to testify before the Library of Congress on the importance of historical preservation of television and video materials.
Sherman once said he considered serving as director of the Peabody Awards the ideal job. “It combines the best elements of my academic training and professional interests,” he said. “And besides, who else has a tape collection of 30,000 programs?”
Sherman’s family has established a fund in his memory to help students on the Peabody judging team attend the awards ceremony in New York. Student judges are chosen through a competitive process and serve with selected UGA faculty on pre-screening committees that review all entries--which in recent years have numbered well over 1,000 per year. The student and faculty recommendations are shared with the Peabody National Advisory Board, which selects the winners of the prestigious awards, considered among the most coveted honors in the broadcast and cable industry.
Contributions to the memorial fund should be made out to the University of Georgia Foundation and can be sent to Bill Herringdine in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
|
