Published: November 02, 2007 09:27 am         

Robert Shields

Robert Shields

DAYTON, Wash. (AP) — The Rev. Robert Shields, a retired schoolteacher and minister whose massive diary detailed everything from his dreams and bodily functions to his grocery store receipts, has died. He was 89.

Shields, whose 3,000- to 4,000-word daily output for more than 20 years gained worldwide attention in the mid-1990s, died Oct. 15 of complications following a series of strokes, according to Hubbard-Rogg Funeral Home, which handled memorial arrangements.

Everything was entered in the diary from 1972 to 1996, when a stroke hampered his ability to type, Shields told Oprah Winfrey on her show in 1997.

His compendium of grocery receipts, personal hygiene, urination, bowel movements, events large and small and random thoughts and observations, typed on a succession of IBM Memory Typewriter 100s, filled 91 cardboard boxes and amounted to an estimated 36.5 million words when it was delivered to Washington State University in 1999.

In 1987 he donated his life savings to establish a charitable trust providing $100,000 for Washington State to care for his diaries but specified that they be closed from public view for 50 years following his death.

     

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.