When Carol A. Shoop entered the real estate business, the former homemaker wanted to distinguish herself from other agents clamoring for clients.
So a few days before Halloween, she dispatched her daughter and several friends door-to-door to deliver a special package: mini-pumpkins advertising her business, along with a recipe for pumpkin cheesecake.
“She got so much work for that,” said her daughter, Laura. “She was just very creative.”
Mrs. Shoop, 61, an avid cook, gardener and free spirit with a knack for business, died of complications from breast cancer Thursday, July 6, in her Chicago home.
Born Carol Anderson, she grew up in Livonia, Mich., a Detroit suburb. She studied special education at Michigan State University in East Lansing and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the subject, family said. In the late 1960s she moved to Chicago and taught emotionally disturbed children in Highland Park.
During a night out at Butch McGuire’s, the famed Division Street singles bar, she caught the eye of Richard Shoop, and they began a whirlwind romance that led to a 38-year marriage.
“We got engaged six weeks after we met,” her husband said. “We got married six months after that.”
Mrs. Shoop left teaching to become a full-time mom, and the couple raised two children in Wilmette. An active hostess and entertainer, Mrs. Shoop cultivated a large circle of friends and stayed in touch with those who moved away, her husband said.
“She was a very social, extroverted person,” he said. “Once she started a friendship with somebody, those people could move all over the world. She would maintain the link.”
But Mrs. Shoop was not a traditional homemaker. She always kept an eye out for business opportunities and joined organizations that allowed her to maintain her individuality, said Margaret “Muggsy” Jacoby, her best friend of 35 years.
“She didn’t want to join all the same things her friends were in because she liked to try new things,” Jacoby said. “She was a person who was always on the go, full of life, just boundless energy.”
Throughout the years Mrs. Shoop launched several business ventures, from selling pillow covers to owning several diet centers in Park Ridge, Jacoby said.
“She was a risk-taker,” Jacoby said. “She was fearless of walking into the unknown.”
In 1989 she became a real estate agent and used her people skills to earn and keep clients during her 15-year career, family said.
“Ultimately the reason my mom was successful was in part because of her own drive, but she was [also] a warm, trustworthy person,” said her son, David. “People liked working with her.”
Mrs. Shoop’s first bout with breast cancer was in 1998. She was approaching her fifth anniversary of being cancer-free when it reappeared, and this time it had spread to her bones, her husband said. But despite her illness, Mrs. Shoop fulfilled her desire to travel and organized trips for friends to Las Vegas, where she and her husband bought a home in 2000, he said.
“Nothing stood in her way,” her daughter said. “She had countless hurdles to overcome, yet she was planning trips all the way to the very end. She never acted like a sick person.”
Other survivors include her mother, Sofia Bowers, and sisters Gretchen Ahmer and Jill Anderson.
Visitation will be held from 3 to 9 p.m. Monday in Scott Funeral Home, 1100 Greenleaf Ave., Wilmette. Mass will be said at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday in St. Joseph Catholic Church, 1747 Lake Ave., Wilmette.
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jfrancisco@tribune.com
