Street renamed for Lt. Michael P. Shea, who died of a 9/11-related illness

Ingrid Shea remembers her late husband, Nassau police Lt. Michael P. Shea, crisscrossing between their Oyster Bay residence to home improvement stores, looking to decorate their corner house on School Street.

“It was neglected,” said Ingrid Shea, 59, who moved in with her husband Aug. 25, 1997, a day after they married. “The bushes [installed], that was all us. He loved fixing stuff. He was a carpenter.”

Although Ingrid and Michael Shea moved out of the home in 2013, the corner of School Street and Berry Hill Road in the hamlet where they lived for 16 years will forever be remembered as “Lieutenant Michael P. Shea Way.”

The family of Michael Shea, who died from brain cancer that he contracted while working at the World Trade Center after 9/11, along with town and county officials, gathered Wednesday for the dedication.

“By looking at that sign and remembering who he was, it will be an education to all about the meaning of law enforcement and how difficult it is,” said Oyster Bay Town Supervisor Joseph Saladino. “So he’ll be schooling people continuously and helping everyone to embrace law enforcement, embrace the men and women who put on the uniform and protect us day in and day out.”

The 52-year-old Levittown native, who died April 1, 2017, retired from the Nassau County Police Department in 2015 as a lieutenant. Before joining Nassau police in 1990, the General Douglas MacArthur High School graduate had become a member of the NYPD in 1985, where he worked in the highway division.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Shea was assigned to Ground Zero. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who lost his nephew, a state court officer, on 9/11 and whose remains were never found, said the work Shea did in Manhattan was meaningful.

“There were families like us who had nothing to bury, and then there were a lot of families because of Michael and all the people that were serving on that pile, they got to bury something of their loved ones,” said Blakeman, who proclaimed Wednesday “Lt. Michael Shea Day.”

The street unveiling Wednesday is among several memorial dedications to Shea and other officers who have died of 9/11-related illnesses.

In 2018, Nassau police named a 39-foot Safe boat “9/11 Heroes” after seven officers who died, including Shea. The Town of Oyster Bay will add Shea’s name at a memorial in Tobay Beach next year, Saladino said.

Nassau County police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said the names of five other officers — three of whom died from 9/11 related illnesses and two of COVID-19 — would be added next year to a memorial wall at police headquarters in Mineola. In 2018, Shea's name was added to the wall for officers who have died of 9/11-related illnesses or COVID-19

“Michael, from all of us, we love you, we miss you,” Ryder said.

Ricky Frassetti was a union trustee with Shea at the Nassau County Superior Officers Association. Frassetti, who became president of the association in 2020, said the renaming was ”extremely well deserved” because, although officers would not forget Shea, the street would “going forward always allow others to read this sign and know what a great man, neighbor, friend, police officer and first responder Mike was.”