The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/27/09 Section: News

Media Credit: WAITES LASETER A police officer keeps watch on Grady Avenue Saturday. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: ALEX BUSKO Athens-Clarke County Police set up barriers surrounding the Athens Community Theater, the scene of the shootings, at Grady and Prince avenues Saturday afternoon. [Click to enlarge]

George Zinkhan [Click to enlarge]

In the eyes of many who saw George Zinkhan on a regular basis, nothing appeared too out of the ordinary during the days leading up to the shooting.

"I never saw any signs of violent behavior," said Richard Fox, a marketing professor whose office is next to Zinkhan's in Brooks Hall. "I'm taken aback, I don't understand and I guess we never will."

But on Thursday, Zinkhan surprised students when he said they did not have to take the final exam. According to the Marketing 4100 syllabus, the scheduled May 5 exam was to make up 20 percent of a students' grade.

"He was kind of weird, very unorganized," said Josh Gurley, a junior in one of Zinkhan's marketing courses. "He was a very dull kind of guy. You definitely wouldn't think that he's so off to go off on a shooting spree."

Zinkhan gave students a sheet of paper with an official University letterhead which included the students' grade. Students were instructed to sign the paper and turn it back in if they did not want to take the exam.

"I don't know one person who didn't sign it," Gurley said. "It seems everything is just kind of falling into place."

Since he began teaching at the University in 1994, much of his work centered around various aspects of marketing. According to a Terry College profile on Zinkhan, "he has published more than 140 articles in the areas of advertising, promotion, knowledge development and electronic commerce."

While at work, he was a well-respected professor and a prolific researcher, Fox said. Despite his productive career, however, which netted him a 2004 Outstanding Contribution to Research award from the American Academy of Advertising, Zinkhan was private about his life outside the University and shared little insight, even to friends.

Fox's last interaction with Zinkhan was on Friday. They had previously been tossing a softball back and forth to prepare for an end-of-year game. On Friday, however, Zinkhan forgot his softball glove but assured Fox that he would remember it on Monday.

And softball was just one of the hobbies in Zinkhan's arsenal of interests.

"He was a pretty unusual guy in the sense that he was interested in everything," Fox said. Zinkhan enjoyed tennis, marketing, nature and writing poetry, he said.

One of Zinkhan's poems, entitled "Appalachian Trail," describes the rituals and tribulations associated with traveling from Georgia to Maine via the Appalachian Trail. Fox said hiking was among Zinkhan's interests.

"Far-sighted trail planners have provided a safer place to camp - away from the peak - in a sheltered lee of the mountain," reads Zinkhan's poem.

Zinkhan was not your ordinary college professor. He received a part-time appointment as a marketing professor at Vrije Universiteit, a university in the southern part of Amsterdam. He also owns a house in the Netherlands, which has prompted officials to consider Amsterdam as one of Zinkhan's possible destinations.

Aside from his main residence in Bogart, his name is listed in an online directory for a $700,000 residence in Houston.

Former student Chris Wood remembers Zinkhan as an "odd, happy-go-lucky individual" and said he was shocked to hear of the murders.

"This is really tragic and I have been numb since hearing about it," he said. "It shows that on the surface, there could be a lot of pain and anguish beneath you never see."

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools