Baron was Coroner of Lexington County, S. C. 1969-1976 when it was still largely an agricultural county but beginning to become a growing county. He lost office when the re-election resulted in a lot of straight-ticket voting which elected his successor.

He was coroner when Lexington County Hospital opened and started a relationship with that hospital's first pathologist (Dr. Guy Calvert) so as to have local coroner autopsies. As a young pathologist at Lexington County Hospital in the 1970s, I look back now at the relative simplicity of those times. I went with the Coroner to get some case information and was surprised to realize that (in those days) his records were in a cardboard file box in the trunk of his car. I remember Coroner Shumpert always wore a traditional mens' hat and had very thick eyeglasses due to cataracts (the days before easy cataract surgery).

Son-in-law, Bob Perry, recalls that Baron loved to fish and could seem to catch fish when few others could. Baron's son, Clayton Shumpert notes that his father's curiosity about death began early; Baron fairly frequently followed ambulances (funeral home hearses did the ambulance functions in those bygone days). In the early 1900s, it became S. C. law that unexpectedly dead bodies could not be removed from the scene of death until the coroner checked the scene. Daughter, Fran Perry notes that Baron owned an insurance agency, was good friends with the local law enforcement folk, was a man filled with curiosity, loved mysteries, and had likely begun to assist former Coroner Day after the brutal murder of an insurance agent who worked for another agency in another part of S. C.

Rev. Dr. Clayton Shumpert (one of Baron's sons) summed his dad up: "I learned being a coroner was a great responsibility. My dad knew a huge number of people. He was 'for the common man'. He was truly a people person and never met a stranger. He was a great fisherman. He served the people of Lexington County and enjoyed doing so."

He and Willie Mae had five children: (1) "Fran" Francelle S. Perry (wife of pharmacist, Dr. R. S. "Bob" Perry, owner & pharmacist of Riley's Pharmacy on the west edge of the city of Lexington, their daughter [Dr. Roberta P. Vining] also being a pharmacist there); (2) Rev. Dr. B. Clayton Shumpert; (3) Wendel Shumpert; (4) Marilyn S. (Smith); and (5) Sally S. (Sprunger) of Atlanta & a missionary to Japan for 25 years.