Join AFIO Member Login
You are logged in as Logout DONATE
Obituary courtesy of https://www.flintofts.com/obituaries/Francis-James-Shea?obId=49588637&source=EmSh
Francis James Shea, of Kirkland, Washington, died on Thursday, September 10, 2026. He was 82.
Francis was born on June 17, 1944 in North Adams, Massachusetts, the son of Olive (Bourgeois) and James Shea. He grew up in Massachusetts and Connecticut, completing high school while living with the family of his dear cousins, Albert, Mary Rose, Kathleen, Helen, and Julia and his uncle, Albert and aunt, Ann (Shea) Griffin.
After high school Francis enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, where he was trained in Mandarin Chinese, including an intensive year studying Chinese at Yale University, and spent a tour of duty in Vietnam. Francis’s study of Mandarin Chinese was a lifelong passion, something he continued to pursue at the University of Washington, where he met his wife Laura (Edwards) in Japanese class although both were Chinese majors.
After graduation Francis and Laura moved to Taiwan to continue their study of Mandarin while teaching English at Tunghai University. They got married in Taipei in 1973 and lived in Taiwan for 3 years, where they met lifelong friends affectionately known as the “Tunghai crew.” Returning to Seattle in 1975, they continued their study of Chinese at the MA level at the University of Washington. In 1976, Francis started an internship translating Chinese at the Foreign Broadcast Information Service. Eventually he became an officer in the foreign service. His lifelong career in the foreign service took him and his family abroad to Hong Kong, Tokyo, Cairo, Brussels, Beijing, and Taipei, and finally Washington, D.C. Francis and Laura moved back to the Seattle area in 2019, after they retired.
Understated and charismatic, Francis was a good listener and a keen observer of the people around him, and always had a quip at the ready (often both in English and in Chinese).
He will be greatly missed by his many friends and his family. In his final months he was surrounded by his loved ones and visited by many of his old friends. He was predeceased by his parents, and his brother Daniel. He is survived by his wife Laura, his daughter Eiren Shea (Elias Saba), his son Brendan Shea (Yerin Kim), and four grandchildren, Lena, Adrian, Oliver, and Mateo.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations to be made in Francis’s name to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research: https://www.michaeljfox.org/