John Shinholser Recovery and Discovery

by Charles McGuigan, originally published in 2001

John Shinholser, who co-founded The McShin Foundation with his spouse, Carol McDaid, back in 2004, recently retired as president and senior peer of the foundation he was instrumental in establishing. This cover story first appeared in NORTH of the JAMES three years before The McShin Foundation was born.

There must be paint in his veins and arteries, rich oils thinned by turpentine, pumping through his system. He’s a big man, thick-fingered, dressed in khakis and a white knit shirt. John Shinholser grew up off Skipwith Road and from the earliest days his grandfather, Melvin Meyer of Tacoma Park, Maryland, was a strong infl uence. His grandfather was a painter of the old school. He mixed lead, tinted his own paints. 

When he was just 15 years old, John Shinholser went to work as a painter for his brother David, who had just established himself as a painting contractor. That first day on the job was not John’s best. “We were painting a house, and my brother was bitching about the way I had the ladder set up and I told him, ‘Look, I got it under control,’” John remembers. “And right about that time the whole bucket spilled. It was a mess. That was in 1974, and that was the fi rst and last time I ever spilt a bucket of paint, until a few weeks ago.” 

After graduating from Tucker High School at age 17, John got his own contractor’s license. He learned to hang wallpaper at the United States School of Professional Paper Hangers in Rutland, Vermont, so he would have work even through the winters. Bit by bit, he was perfecting his skills, gaining a reputation as a fine painter, but he was getting restless. 

For several years he worked with a crew that traveled throughout the southeast and southwest, wallpapering and painting hotels. “We were a band of gypsy painters and paper hangers and all we did was go around the country doing one hotel after another,” says John. “It was good money, it was steady, you were always traveling. We were doing everything from Hyatt Regencys to Days Inns. Colorado, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida. I was traveling, making good money and I was a party animal. I was on a fi rst name basis with everyone in every whorehouse in the South. It was a way of life.” 

That way of life included using many different drugs from pot to magic mushrooms, from acid to coke. And liquor and beer. “I got into a little drinking problem back then,” he says. “I was drinking about a fifth a day. I was living hard.” 

And then something happened. John was living in Aurora, Colorado. His crew had been working a job in Denver and he was about to be evicted from his apartment. He’d pissed away almost all his money. In his wallet there was only one ten dollar bill. It was late in the afternoon, the sun was dropping in the sky, and he was faced with a dilemma. He could either use the ten for booze or food. 

He strolled through a nearby park that had a large pond. He noticed ducks paddling on the water, waddling on the shoreline. He saw the back porches of the houses that lined the park, overlooking the pond. He saw a dog chained to a post and sneaked onto the back porch and headed for the dog food bowl. He scooped some of the food out of the bowl with his hand and headed to the pond. 

“I started feeding the ducks dog food,” he says. He holds out his hand, palm up, in illustration. “They’d come up to my hand and eat. One duck and then another.” And as one duck billed at the food in his palm, John grabbed its neck and snapped it like a twig. He took the duck back to his apartment then went to the liquor store for a fifth of bourbon. “So I ate and drank good,” he says. “Of course the next morning I was spitting out feathers.” 

When he woke, plucking a feather from his mouth, his head ached and he felt a profound emptiness. And he was fl at broke. John left the house a little after five in the morning and started up the main drag through Aurora. The cars that traveled along the road still had their lights on and the morning air was crisp. He stood on a corner and eyed a poster that said: “It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure.” He looked at the trim, well-groomed man on the poster, the blunt prow of an aircraft carrier in the background. He considered how he looked and then he crossed the street and approached the recruiting station. 

“In a split second, I made up my mind,” he says. “I thought, screw it, I’ll join the Navy and maybe it’ll straighten me out with this drinking stuff.” At that hour though the only recruiting station open was the Marines. “So they made me a grunt,” says John. 

After boot camp in San Diego, he heard about a field radio operator position in Hawaii. “All I saw when I heard about that job was, Hawaii,” he says. “I was thinking about Hawaiian reefer and hula dancers.” The reality was that John was trained to carry radios on the front line of defense. During his four years in the Corps was deployed to Iran, on the eve of the American hostage release. The ship he was aboard was poised in the Straits of Hormuz. “We were actually locked and loaded, prepared to attack Iran when they released the hostages,” he remembers. “We were gung-ho, we were ready to kill, and we were disappointed when we found out we weren’t going to go ashore.” 

Throughout his career as a Marine, John also painted. “I painted tanks and Jeeps and cannons, even the captain’s mess on the last ship I was on,” says John. “They loved me, I was a poster Marine.” 

But there were some problems. John had the habit of drinking too much on payday, getting into bar room brawls, landing in trouble. “So in 1982, after about my fifth time in trouble for beating people up or getting beaten up by them, the Marine Corps sent me to rehab on base,” says John. “My life changed completely. That’s when I stopped drinking and doing drugs.” He tucks a small plug of tobacco next to his gums and his mouth begins working over the cud. 

Shortly after he completed the program, John’s stint was up. His superiors wanted him to sign on again, and the offer was tempting. John could have gone on to embassy duty. He could have become a drill instructor, become a career Marine. But John had other plans. “I wanted to come home to Richmond and become a successful contractor,” he says. 

Which is what he did. He worked hard, completely sober for the first time in years, and within six months had two trucks and five painters. A couple years later he had seven trucks and 25 painters during peak seasons. 

Things were falling into place. He got married, built a house off Skipwith Road, not far from the home where he grew up. He began accumulating rental properties, five in all, that served as safe havens for people with alcohol and drug abuse problems. “I was real involved in recovery, I became passionate about it,” he says. “I had five halfway houses that housed sixty guys. I funded it all out of my business.” 

When asked why he funded the halfway houses, John says, “To keep what I’ve got, I’ve got to give it away. I’ve also probably trained half the painting contractors in Richmond. I helped them get started and now they’re out there competing with me and it’s made a better contractor out of me. It’s a principle I practice in all my affairs.” 

As his business grew, everything was suddenly within John’s reach. He and his wife had a daughter named Mary Page. His taxes were paid a year in advance. He owned five properties, had about $35,000 in blue chip stocks, owned a new car, had $10,000 in his checking account, $15,000 in accounts receivables, and in that year his company had grossed $800,000. “I mean, I was sitting on the top of the world,” he says. “For the first time in my life, I was enjoying the fruits of my labor.” 

It couldn’t get any better. And then it did. He was selected as president of the local Painting and Decorator Contractors Association, a crowning honor. He was preparing to go to the PDCA meeting that evening for induction as the new president. He shaved carefully, put on a suit and tie. He checked on his daughter and waited for his wife to come home from work. 

When his wife arrived she said four words that sent a ripple of panic through him. “We have to talk,” she told him. “Look,” she said, “I’m unhappy and I think the marriage is the problem and I’m going to leave and we just have to deal with it.” Almost immediately, a numbness washed over him. 

“I was traumatized,” John tells me. “I felt like I had arrived. I knew what my mission on earth was and I was doing it, and then, all of a sudden, the plug was pulled.” 

He wandered around in a daze, crying, something he hadn’t done since he was a boy. He was in shock, unable to focus, consumed by emotional pain. His wife moved out within the week, taking their daughter with her. At that time, John Shinholser wasn’t sure how he was going to make it. 

But there were lifelines. People John knew from 12-step programs over the years came to his aid in a way he would never have guessed. “This was the first time in my life when I literally had a hundred people surround me and carry me through this period where I couldn’t carry myself,” says John Shinholser. “It was a very remarkable situation. I mean every day I had someone in my presence reassuring me that I was going to get through this. And I did.”