James J. Shea, MD’57, and the late Sheila Tobin Shea, SJN’58, BSN’59
The Sheila T. and James J. Shea Family Endowed Chair in Anesthesiology
“God has been pretty good to me,” said James J. Shea, M.D., on a rainy day in California this past winter. “It was time for me to give back.”
And that’s just what Dr. Shea has done for Creighton University, in his name and that of his late wife Sheila.
A native of Leavenworth, Kan., Dr. Shea says he came to Creighton years ago based on something his sister had said. A nurse at the University of Colorado Medical Center at the time, she told the would-be doctor that she and her colleagues always “looked for a Creighton intern because they were the best in patient care. They just make better doctors.”
Young Shea took her thoughts to heart and soon enrolled at Creighton, accumulating his undergraduate classes and then his medical requirements. “The Jesuits were tough,” Shea recalls, “but they knew their subjects.” Today, Dr. Shea smiles when he tells his kids that he is “the only one in the family without a bachelor’s degree.” Of course, technically, he has one, though back then the University put the two together under the medical rubric.
Shea soon would meet his life’s partner at Creighton in the late 1950s, Sheila Mary Tobin, a student nurse from Mitchell, S.D. The Tobin family was certainly familiar with Creighton, as father, uncle and a cousin had earned medical degrees long before Sheila matriculated in nursing.
Upon graduating, the couple married and settled in California, where Jim would eventually have a private anesthesiology practice in Visalia. They started their family in 1960 with the birth of their first child, Mary Elizabeth, and in the 60s the family grew by seven. Today they range across the US, and daughter Tricia, BA’82, BSN’83, like her mother, is a nurse. Grandchildren total three, to date.
In 1998, Sheila passed away, and Dr. Shea retired a few years later.
The Shea Chair was filled last September by James L. Manion, MD’66, a member since 1979 of the School of Medicine’s Department of Anesthesiology. Dr. Shea believes Dr. Manion is exactly the person to hold the endowed chair. “His plans for the future of the department, his expertise at funding, his emphasis on community work” plus Dr. Manion’s excellence as an anesthesiologist befit his appointment, Dr. Shea said.
Above all, the Shea gift of an endowed chair in Dr. Shea’s specialty marks the love of the physician’s life and the anchor of the family.
“To Sheila Mary Tobin Shea,” he said at the chair’s inaugural. “ … She was the queen of our home and queen of my heart. Because of her and with her and for her, I became a far better man than I would have been without her.”
And Creighton becomes a far better school with the Sheas’ abundant generosity. Thank you, Shea Family, for your gracious, transformative gift.
(Dr. Shea also has made another gift to Creighton to help begin a research program in anesthesiology.)