In 1960, in Mrs. Kelly's sixth-grade class, Pat Shea had to read a newspaper twice a week and discuss current events. Civil rights demonstrations were heating up, and young Shea came to believe that John Kennedy, a Catholic like himself, and the Democratic Party held the best hope for America's "human" problems.
Now 32 years later and running for Utah governor, Shea still believes in the Democratic Party. He served as its Utah chairman from 1983 to '85 and national commit teeman from 1988 to '92. Last month, Shea gave a closing prayer at the end of one session of the National Democratic Convention.But Shea is not a party hack, doesn't buy all things the party or its leaders do. Rather, he says he likes to take a reasoned approach to public policy and politics.
Of all the candidates in the various races this year in Utah, with the exception of Wayne Owens and other incumbents, Shea probably has more experience within the party structure and politics than all others. He's crammed a lot into his 44 years.
Born in Holy Cross Hospital, as a baby he moved with his family to Montana for six years when his father, a lifelong employee of the Chevrolet Motor Division, was transferred. When his father was transferred back to Salt Lake City, Shea received his elementary and secondary education in local schools, graduating from Highland High School in 1966.
"I was known in high school as `Father Pat,' " he recalls, a takeoff on his Catholicism. "I was one who could talk to the Mormons, non-Mormons, the smokers and the nonsmokers. I kind of got along with a wide variety of people." But he didn't get along with a number of teachers.
In his senior year, he was kicked out of the classrooms of four of his seven teachers. "I argued with them - over what they were teaching, their methodology, how they disciplined other students." Several teachers who befriended Shea helped him get into other classes.
Argument has always been a side of Shea, who says he "was lost" at Highland High his first year, struggling by with a 2.1 average. "It was a difficult time at home, hard at school." But then a caring teacher introduced him to debate. "It was like a duck to water." He and his debate partner won a big meet his junior year, he was state debate champ his senior year in two categories.
"I like the challenge of thinking on my feet, quickly coming up with arguments and counter arguments."
The intellectual side of Shea cannot be disputed. He graduated from Stanford University, won a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford and graduated from Harvard Law School. A practicing Catholic, in high school he spent a four-day retreat at Huntsville's monastery and one summer worked with Jesuit priests in Hong Kong, dealing with the poor and refugees.
He is arguably the smartest candidate for governor this year. While perhaps uncomfortable with that tag, Shea admits that he's had to be careful about dealing with people and talking about his accomplishments and intellect.
"I've thought a lot about this (some people believing he is intellectually arrogant). Maybe here (in Utah) it is seen as an attempt at one-upmanship. Part of it is just me growing up, my insecurities. If at times it seems I mention people or things I've done, it comes from growing up in a family where I was the first child ever to graduate from college. I was a Catholic in a Mormon culture, kind of a minority myself. I had to try hard. When I joined the Stanford soccer team, I was the only kid who hadn't gone to a prep school. When I walked into a teammate's room he was reading (a Greek philosopher) in Greek. Not an English translation. I was blown away. I had to compete. I had to work very hard."
At first Stanford - paid for by a grandfather's trust fund - was two years of grinding, but very stimulating, work. His junior year Shea had a bit more fun, running and winning the student-body presidency. He won with a coalition of blacks, Hispanics and Asians. He grew his fuzzy hair long and was kidded he got part of the minority vote because of his "Utah Afro."
His senior year at Stanford, Shea was appointed to a special student unrest committee that traveled California campuses, reacting to violent demonstrations in 1969-70. "I was the youngest person ever to be on Meet The Press, when committee members were interviewed. I missed my Stanford graduation because I was called to the White House that June for a meeting with Henry Kissinger, Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and others to talk about how to reach the youth in America during the Vietnam War." (Shea took a student draft deferment to attend college. Later, he got a high number in the lottery. He has no military record.)
Shea's excellent grades and extra-curricular activities won him a Rhodes Scholarship and two years at Oxford. At Stanford he'd studied history. At Oxford he studied genetics and related sciences. "One (Oxford) tutor I had won the Nobel Prize two years after I left. Others were leaders in their fields. They wanted me to get my Ph.D. and become the world's leader in chicken embryology."
But Shea had other ideas. During the summers at Stanford he'd worked on the staffs of U.S. Sens. Frank Moss, Mike Mansfield and Birch Bayh. He liked Washington and politics.
After Oxford, Stanford colleagues said they could get him into medical school, and Shea seriously considered becoming a doctor and specializing in pediatrics. "I should have done it. But I wanted to get out of school quickly and start earning a living, helping my family." (Shea's father had died in 1972).
So he accepted a scholarship to Harvard Law School, "and hated every, and I mean every, minute of it."
At Stanford and Oxford, Shea had been in small classes where he was encouraged to argue with teachers, expand his mind. "In my Oxford tutorials I was the only student; just me."
His Harvard class was 520 students - "An intellectual boot camp." The first semester he was in a tough professor's class - "The guy the lead character in `Paper Chase' was modeled after." The professor had a habit of mimicking students' responses to his questions. One of Shea's classmates stuttered, and the professor stuttered in responding to his answer. After class Shea said he confronted the professor, told him his actions were inexcusable. "The professor apologized to the class the next day."
While he worked hard at Harvard, his real delight was Washington, D.C., where he'd retreat on weekends, summers and breaks to work in Congress, part of the time on the House Judiciary Committee.
He actually skipped his Harvard senior classes the spring of 1975 so he could work as assistant staff director on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Again, loyal teachers at Harvard interceded with the law school dean, who didn't want Shea to graduate even though he'd passed his classes by studying fellow students' notes and doing his assigned work without attending lectures.
"I worked on the House Judiciary Committee when we investigated government, worked on the Senate Intelligence Committee. I've seen the underbelly of American government," Shea says with a smile.
By February 1976, Shea was exhausted, tired of Washington, convinced that the Senate Intelligence Committee was chasing useless conspiracies while serious breaches in Democratic institutions were ignored.
Shea moved back to Salt Lake City, rented a basement apartment in Emigration Canyon. "I didn't have a TV, no radio, no newspapers. I hiked in the mountains and went to work for VanCott Bagley (a local law firm)." Idaho Sen. Frank Church, who as chairman of the Intelligence Committee had hired Shea, told him he'd become cynical too young.
But Shea was only "recharging" himself. VanCott Bagley was not Washington. He was a bit bored with regular legal work. "My first case at VanCott Bagley was to find out if we could put a copyright on the Idaho potato." In 1979, Church asked Shea to come back, to be the chief counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Shea agreed and worked on such issues as the SALT II treaty, the Olympic boycott by the United States and the Iranian hostage crisis.
While in Utah, he'd met a nurse and something clicked. After 18 months in D.C. as Church's counsel, Shea decided to come back to Utah, marry his wife, Debbie, and start "a real life here."
He went back to work at VanCott Bagley, and at the request of former Gov. Scott M. Matheson, Shea reluctantly agreed to be state Democratic Party chairman in 1983. "No one else was dumb enough to take the job," for the Republicans held every decent office in the state except the governorship.
In 1985 he left VanCott Bagley to become in-house legal counsel to KUTV Channel 2, a position he's on leave from while campaigning. After leaving the party chairman post, Shea has been active in a number of public debates, including helping to lead the fight to defeat the 1988 tax-cutting initiatives.
The Deseret News yesterday published a profile of Stewart Hanson, Shea's primary election opponent. Profiles of the Republican candidates will be printed Friday and Saturday.