By Albert Amateau
Patrick Joseph Shea, a Village resident for more than 40 years, died April 20 of pneumonia in his home on W. 14th St. at the age of 82.
Diagnosed with cancer, he was bedridden since last fall, according to his wife. A native New Yorker who lived in Los Angeles for many years, he traveled the world as a salesman before he came to the Village and began selling advertising.
He was born in Manhattan, the son of Edna and Joseph Shea, a theatrical producer. The family moved to Connecticut when Patrick was a child but went to live in Los Angeles when he was 16 after his father died.
In the Navy during World War II, he served as a photographer in the Pacific.
“He was a champion boxer in the Navy and won many titles. He told me he only lost once,” said his wife, Regina Villapaz Shea, who met him in 1988. They were married last year.
After his discharge from the service he returned to Los Angeles and moved with a Hollywood social set. He was a salesman and lived for a few years in London before he returned to New York where he settled in the Village and worked in advertising.
“I knew Pat since I was 5 years old because he lived in our building on Perry St. and was friends with my stepfather,” said Justine Pippitt-Zagolin, a longtime friend. “Thanks to his good looks and charm he had a reputation as a ladies’ man and he could sell anything,” she said.
“He loved football — he never missed a Super Bowl,” said his wife. “He loved to cook all kinds of ethnic food, he loved to go shopping for sweaters and he loved to travel and to go on cruises to the Caribbean and the Mediterranean,” she said.
The funeral was on April 22 at Redden’s Funeral Home and burial was in George Washington Memorial in New Jersey.
