Family and friends could be in the middle of enjoying a get-together when Shea Louise Haley showed up. Suddenly, the fun factor would rise to a different level.
“From the moment she walked in, everyone would shout, ‘Shea’s here!’ She was the life of the party,” said her sister Dana Brown of Stockbridge. “She could take any topic and find a way to make it funny.”
“She was funny. She was caring. She was giving. She was goofy,” said her niece Ashly Patterson of Locust Grove. “She also was sensitive and cared more for others than herself.”
Haley died April 7 at her home in Duluth. She was 35. A graveside service was April 11 at the College Park Cemetery, where attendees wore superhero T-shirts in honor of the comic book fanatic.
She was born in 1979 in East Point, the youngest of five children. Her siblings were teenagers or older by the time she was a toddler. But even as a child, the outgoing Haley could captivate a room of folks, whether preschoolers or seniors.
“She had an old soul,” Brown said. “No matter the age, she could relate to and communicate with anyone, whether they were 80 years old or 20 years old or 2.”
After graduating from Tri-Cities High School, Haley earned an associate’s degree from Gordon State College. In 2004, she received her bachelor’s in communications and media studies from Clayton State University.
During college, she was an intern at WSB-TV, where her work ethic and attitude impressed CB Hackworth, a former WSB producer. Hackworth later hired her as a production assistant for the “Andrew Young Presents” television series, a freelance job she worked off and on during her last four years of life.
“Often people with a degree don’t want to do errands. Shea did not get insulted,” Hackworth said. “She was willing to do anything to help. Someone like that is hard to replace. Her skill set and attitude are a difficult combination to find in people.”
An avid reader, Haley wrote poetry and short stories that she hoped one day to publish. A family favorite was her story on “The Ketchup Wars,” about what happens when the refrigerator door closes and the light goes out.
Last year, she started driving school buses for Gwinnett County Public Schools, and found a way to bring fun to ferrying schoolchildren. She wore funky sunglasses and decorated her bus for Halloween and Thanksgiving.
To encourage reading, she gave her riders bookmarks during book fair season. At Halloween, she gave them erasers. At Christmas she passed out candy canes. She also brought a dry-erase board on the bus to scribble a quote or word of the day. Her younger bus passengers particularly enjoyed trying to guess the names of the superheroes on her T-shirts.
“Shea was like a big kid herself,” Patterson said. “Her kids loved her. She would find ways to let the kids know they meant the world to her. She truly enjoyed her job.”
Marvel’s Hawkeye was her favorite comic book character. Her favorite superhero actor was Dean Cain, who she loved as Superman. At Dragon Con a few years ago, she met Cain and Marvel comic book writer Stan Lee.
Hackworth, not in town during that convention, trusted Haley to get Lee’s autograph on his cherished Fantastic Four 1 comic book, which already had the autograph of the artist Jack Kirby. “That’s an example of the level of trust I had, to give to Shea something that meant a lot to me,” he said. “She was a really great person like that. She was happy to make me happy by getting the autograph.”
In addition to comics, Haley developed a love for playing videogames after getting hooked on Atari as a child. She also enjoyed geocaching, preferring to shun the shortcuts to make each hunt for caches last as long as possible.
“She always took the longest way because she did not want the day to end,” said her longtime partner Jennifer McEarchern of Duluth. “She took her time to enjoy the things we would see along the way. It was as much about the journey as it was about finding the cache.”
In addition to her sister Dana and partner Jennifer, Haley is survived by her mother Kathryn Canida White of Woodstock; her brother Jeffrey White of Stockbridge; her sister Allison White Fletcher of Marietta; her brother Dale White of Hampton; and her stepson Noah McEarchern of Duluth.
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