The Rev. Terry Shea, Jesuit Educator And `Man Of Vision'

The Rev. Terry Shea, S.J., former president of Seattle Preparatory School, who was described by a colleague as a man ahead of his time, died early yesterday of complications associated with AIDS.

The Rev. Daniel Weber, S.J., who succeeded Father Shea as president of Bellarmine Preparatory School in Tacoma in 1976, recalled that two years earlier Father Shea successfully converted Bellarmine into the Jesuits' first co-educational prep school in the world, combining two girls' schools, Aquinas Academy, run by Dominican sisters, and St. Leo's High School, operated by Franciscan nuns, with the Jesuit all-boys school.

The Bellarmine board approved Father Shea's taking his case before the late Father Pedro Arrupe, Jesuit superior general in Rome, to win approval of merging the three schools.

"I used to tell people when they would get nervous around him that he was 10 years ahead of his time," Weber said. "He was a very bright man who knew education . . . He was a man of vision."

Father Shea died in the Jesuit infirmary in Spokane. He was 58.

President of Seattle Prep since 1992, he resigned in a May 6 letter in which he told faculty, parents and students that his health had been very good up until a year ago, although he was HIV-positive. But more recently, because of health complications due to intestinal viruses that caused him to lose weight and strength, "I need to resign."

A native of Spokane, Shea entered the Jesuit novitiate in Sheridan, Ore., in 1955. He was ordained June 8, 1968, in St. Aloysius Church in Spokane and spent a year in the ministry at Mount St. Michael's Institute in Spokane. In 1971 he earned a master's degree in business administration from New York University and spent the next year directing strategic planning for the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus.

Father Shea became Bellarmine's president in 1972. Four years later he was named executive secretary of the national Jesuit Conference in Washington, D.C. He completed a doctorate in political science at the University of Maryland in 1986 and taught political science at Seattle University before assuming the Seattle Prep presidency.

At Seattle Prep yesterday, staff and faculty working during the summer break were stunned at the news of his death.

"I knew he was dying, but I didn't think it would come this quickly," said Father Rich Perry, S.J., Prep religion instructor.

Perry said Father Shea's vision for education in a Christian environment was something he was sure others will perpetuate at the school. That vision, he said, involved "how students live with each other and with the other species and with the planet. He had this vision that we're all in this together, and if we don't take care of one another, we're going to destroy everything."

Father Shea is survived by his mother, Mrs. Roy Shea of Spokane; three brothers, David, Gary and Michael Shea, all of Spokane; three sisters, Micky Shannon, of Mission Viejo, Calif.; Gerry Bauer, of Los Gatos, Calif., and Susan Shea Smith, of Spokane, and many nieces and nephews.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Spokane's St. Aloysius Catholic Church. Cremation was planned.

A Tacoma memorial funeral Mass will be at 7:30 p.m. July 26 in the Bellarmine chapel and a Seattle memorial funeral Mass will be at 10:30 a.m. July 29 at St. Joseph's Catholic Church, 732 18th Ave. E.

Perry said a memorial probably will be included for students at Seattle Prep's annual Mass of the Holy Spirit, which will be Sept. 8 this year.

At Father Shea's request, remembrances may be in the form of donations to the Seattle AIDS Ministry, Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle, 910 Marion St., Seattle 98104.