Jonathan & Elaine Shirah: A Tale of Two Coaches

Jonathan D. Shirah is in his tenth year as track and field coach of the Muscle Shoals Trojans; his wife Mary Elaine has been volleyball coach for the Sheffield Lady Bulldogs. The parents of a teenage daughter and son would seem to have been living an ideal life. Jonathan Shirah has coached winning track teams the past few years, while Elaine has won her own awards in various local runs. Photos of the family look like adverts for Nordic Track. Yet, apparently not all was what it seemed with the Shirahs.

On Monday night, Tuscumbia Police were called to the Shirahs' home on Chess Lane in Tuscumbia's Colonial Heights, a neighborhood where houses are valued in the 200K range. There they found Mary Elaine Shirah lying on the floor, having been thrown "through a glass coffee table." Obviously the more expensive the table, the thicker the glass. Yet sources on home furnishings laud all such glass as extremely hard to break.

Who called the police and how long had Mary Elaine Shirah been lying where her husband had thrown her? These are still unanswered questions. We can state that her condition was such police felt the need for her to be checked out at the Emergency Room.

Jonathan D. Shirah spent the requisite 12 hours in jail--standard on domestic violence charges. Sources inform us that by Thursday morning he had returned to Muscle Shoals High School where he engaged in a verbal confrontation with the assistant principal. Shirah was then removed from the school by a Student Resource Officer.

Now Shirah has been charged with misdemeanor assault. It's only a stroke of fate that the coffee table glass broke in such a manner as to prevent serious injury--he could have conceivably been charged with Felony Murder at the end of the night's melee.

So far this week, Shirah has abused his wife and cursed his immediate superior; is this the kind of teacher Muscle Shoals wants to educate its youth? We have no idea where the Shirah marriage is headed, but judging from past events in Alabama, Jonathan D. Shirah will soon be teaching at some unsuspecting school in South Alabama.

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A recent column by J.J. Ray questioned the ethics of Tuscumbia attorney Rebecca Narmore. Ms. Narmore has contacted us concerning the blog. According to Narmore:

I obtained an opinion from the Alabama State Bar General Counsel's office regarding my representation of Marsha Allen in her claim for backpay. The Alabama State Bar stated that I do not have a conflict in this matter. In the future, you might want to be careful as to whom you allow to post information and opinions about people and their work ethic. I do expect that the individual(s) who posted that article are the same ones set on destroying Cherokee. That doesn't surprise me because ethics is not in their vocabulary.

We are happy to make this addendum to the account of current legal actions in the Town of Cherokee; however, ethics is often, like morals, in the eye of the beholder. We're sure many local attorneys, having been terminated by the town, would never have looked back at the floundering municipality.

We will also add that J.J. Ray does not live in or near Cherokee. We doubt he wishes to see the town destroyed. If there should be any out there who do, it would seem all they need to do is wait--it's doing a pretty good job of destroying itself.

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For the truly serious collector of Sheffield memorabilia: Link

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