http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/05/09/0509shrakeobit.html
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A Fort Worth native, Shrake got his start at the Fort Worth Press in 1951 while still in college at Texas Christian University. The Press was a second-rate paper in a fourth-rate building, and there Shrake worked under legendary sports editor and columnist Blackie Sherrod. It was a place so cheap you had to turn in your pencil nub to get a new one, according to Davis. And Shrake fell desperately and hopelessly in love. As he said in a 1989 interview:
"I looked around at all the people, and the state editor was over there eating a can of sardines at his desk at 6 o'clock in the morning, and the bowling writer was back there drunk and had set fire to the wastebasket, and the one-legged city editor was threatening people with his crutch. ... All of a sudden I walked into a world I belonged to."
At the Press, he worked with Dan Jenkins — best known as the author of "Semi-Tough" and for his long career at Sports Illustrated — and Austin journalist and author Gary Cartwright, who on Friday called Shrake "my best friend for 50 years."
They worked like crazy and howled at the moon at night. For a time, Shrake dated a stripper at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club in Dallas.
"We were fairly wild, untamed, uncontrolled boys," Cartwright said.
Asked if he was reliving any favorite adventures after hearing of his friend's passing, Cartwright said: "None that are clean enough to tell."
