He attended the University of Alabama, and he became the president and owner of radio station WRKB in Kannapolis, North Carolina.
Prior to playing professional baseball, he attended Cannon High School in Kannapolis.
Shinn was born in Kannapolis, North Carolina and was a poor student growing up, graduating last in his high school class of 293 from A. L. Brown High School.
In 2004, a silent film about Kannapolis, showing the everyday behavior of ordinary people, which was made in 1941 by itinerant filmmaker H. Lee Waters, was selected by the Library of Congress for listing in the United States National Film Registry, as a representative of this kind of filmed "town portrait" popular in the 1930s and 1940s.
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David H. Murdock, owner of real estate company Castle & Cooke, Inc. and former CEO of Dole Food Company, Inc., and Molly Corbett Broad, President of the 16-campus University of North Carolina system, unveiled plans on September 12, 2005 for the North Carolina Research Campus, an economic revitalization project that encompasses the site of the former Cannon Mills plant and entire downtown area of Kannapolis, North Carolina.
This was done in order for that road to honor Dale Earnhardt, a NASCAR driver from Kannapolis that drove the #3 car who was killed in the 2001 Daytona 500.
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The two routes swapped designations in 2002 to put NC 3 near the home of Dale Earnhardt, a deceased NASCAR driver from Kannapolis that drove the #3 car.
After four years in private practice in Kannapolis, a year as a counsel to a real estate developer, Vice President and General Counsel of Cannon Mills Realty and Development Corporation, Newby was appointed Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina in 1985, a post he held for almost twenty years.