It was with a heavy heart that we said goodbye to Michael “Schu” Schumacher last December. Sixty years a regular. One favorite booth. A carafe of coffee always at the elbow.
Schu started coming to Franks’ in the early 1960s, and never really stopped. Most mornings, you’d find him outside first — smoking, eating, holding court — until the cold, the snow, or his breakfast crew finally herded him into his booth. Once inside, the agenda was sports, movies, music, books, and (you knew it was coming) politics. The carafe didn’t last long. Neither did the silence.
During the John Gilmore days, when Gilmore called in sick, Schu would sometimes open the place up and cook for the regulars himself. That’s not the kind of thing you do unless a diner has become your second living room.
A Writer of Much Renown
Most newcomers had no idea who was holding court back there. That was Schu — a working biographer with a national reputation, and one of Kenosha’s quietest literary exports.
Over a career that started in the 1970s, he wrote biographies of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, guitarist Eric Clapton, folk singer Phil Ochs, comics legends Al Capp and Will Eisner, basketball pioneer George Mikan, and his friend, the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. The Ginsberg book, Dharma Lion, is still cited as one of the definitive works on the poet’s life. Schu also edited Ginsberg’s letters and journals for the University of Minnesota Press. Along the way, his byline ran in Playboy and Sports Illustrated.
His favorite subject, though, was right outside our front door. Schu spent decades chronicling the Great Lakes — the ships, the storms, and the people who lived and died by them. Mighty Fitz told the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Wreck of the Carl D. recounted the 1958 sinking on Lake Michigan and the four men who fought to survive it. He wrote about the catastrophic November storm of 1913, which claimed more than 250 sailors. His final book, Along Lake Michigan, came out in 2025 and traced fourteen shipwrecks across nearly a century.
He wrote his manuscripts by hand. Then he retyped them on a typewriter. Until the very end.
A Man Who Knew His Specials
Schu loved food. All kinds. He was never one to skip the special of the day, and his all-time favorite was meatloaf and mashed potatoes — so much so that for his 60th birthday, right here at Frank’s, our kitchen built him a “cake” out of the stuff. Meatloaf tiers. Mashed-potato frosting. He couldn’t have been happier.
His daughter Emily Joy described him as “a history person” and “a good human.” We’d add a third: a Frank’s lifer.
Celebrating Schu
Frank’s was Schu’s home away from home, and we miss him greatly. Friends and family are gathering to celebrate his life:
Friday, May 22, 2026 | 5–9 PM Civil War Museum – Freedom Hall 5400 1st Avenue, Kenosha, WI 53140 Light refreshments will be served.
May 22 would have been his 76th birthday. We can’t think of a better day for it.
Rest in peace, Schu. We hope the angels know how to make a Spam sandwich.
