RobFRANCIS XAVIER SHEA GREW UP IN THE BOROUGH OF Queens in New York City. After graduating in 1965 from Rice High School on 124th Street in Harlem, where the Congregation of Christian Brothers taught him discipline the old-fashioned way—with paddles and leather straps—he joined the U.S. Marines. Parris Island was almost a vacation after four years at Rice.He spent a year in Vietnam with the First Marine Aircraft Wing, stationed outside Danang. Then he became a New York City policeman. Over the next thirteen years, he received sixty-seven department medals, including the Medal of Valor, the department’s third-highest commendation, awarded “for acts of outstanding personal bravery intelligently performed in the line of duty at imminent personal hazard to life under circumstances evincing a disregard of personal consequences.” In Frank’s case, this involved a Sunday-morning shootout with two Jamaican drug dealers on Sutter Avenue in Brooklyn in April 1977. As Frank and his partner approached their parked car, one of the dealers fired a shot that hit Frank’s partner in the leg.
