Photograph of Morgan Enlow Shipman and Jill Ensminger

Pictured here are Morgan Enlow Shipman and Jill Ensminger. Ensminger was for many years a Worthington resident, and she was the longtime partner of Shipman. The two are pictured on vacation in Palm Beach, Florida.

Morgan Shipman was a Worthington resident for 40 years and was a legendary law professor at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He taught there for 39 years and was an unprecedented five-time recipient of the school’s “Outstanding Professor of the Year” award. In 2004, the award was renamed the “Morgan E. Shipman Outstanding Professor Award” in his honor. In 2003, the school established the Morgan E. Shipman Endowed Scholarship Fund to provide academic merit scholarships to students. He was known by his students for his dedicated mentoring and for his “Shipmanisms,” pithy and memorable musings on life and law. In addition to teaching at the university, he also served as part-time Of Counsel to the Columbus law firm of Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease.

A native of Texas, he earned his bachelors degree in accounting in 1955 from the University of Texas, and his law degree from UT in 1958. From 1958-1963 and 1968-1969 he practiced as an associate with the law firm of Covington and Burling in Washington, D.C. He also taught as an assistant professor at Harvard Law School, and served as Special Counsel in the Office of Program Planning of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

Shipman was a well-known and beloved figure around Worthington. According to a tribute by Rosemary Kubera published in “The Worthington News” on December 10, 2008, he was a regular patron at many Worthington restaurants, including the Worthington Inn and PK O’Ryan’s Irish Pub. He wore colorful ties and jackets year-round, and enjoyed walking throughout Worthington. A voracious reader, he was a frequent recommender of books and often sat outside his house reading late into the night.

His two daughters are both graduates of Worthington High School. Susannah Shipman is an independent filmmaker and the producer of the Oscar-winning documentary "Taxi to the Dark Side," about the US's torture and interrogation practices during the War in Afghanistan. She is also producer of the documentary “Why We Fight,” which won a Peabody and the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize. Claire Shipman is a journalist, author and public speaker with an illustrious career in broadcast journalism. She has served as a regular contributor to "Good Morning America," as White House correspondent for NBC News, and as a correspondent for CNN in the White House as well as in Moscow. Her coverage of the fall of the Soviet Union helped earn CNN a Peabody Award.