John Joseph Shaffrey, a retired Gulf Oil Corp. senior lubrication engineer and a volunteer, died July 21 of complications from Alzheimer's disease at Gilchrist Hospice Care. He was 87.
Mr. Shaffrey, the son of a paper mill manager and a homemaker, was born in Ogdensburg, N.Y., and raised in Cornerbrook, Newfoundland, where his family had moved in 1929 to find work.
He was a 1938 graduate of St. Henry's High School. His college studies at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, were interrupted when he enlisted in 1939 in the Canadian navy.
In 1942, he transferred to the U.S. Navy and served in the South Pacific as a quartermaster aboard the destroyers USS Isherwood and USS Enright.
After being discharged in 1946, he returned to St. Francis Xavier University, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1948 in engineering.
Mr. Shaffrey joined Mobil Oil Co. in 1949, taking up an initial assignment in Medellin, Colombia. In 1951, he was sent to Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, and two years later, was named manager in Caracas.
In 1955, Mr. Shaffrey was appointed international correspondent for the Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. in Akron, Ohio, and three years later moved to Baltimore when he was named senior lubrication engineer at Gulf Oil Corp.
He retired in 1983.
Mr. Shaffrey, who moved to the Thornleigh neighborhood of Baltimore County in 1957, had been a longtime parishioner of Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church in Towson, where he was a volunteer, Eucharistic minister and confraternity of Christian doctrine teacher and worked with Boy Scout Troop 750.
He was a volunteer at the Pickersgill retirement community and St. Joseph Medical Center. He was a member of the Father O'Neill Council 4011 of the American Legion and was a past president of the Thornleigh Neighborhood Association.
He had also been an active member of the Immaculate Conception Home School Association, as well as the Calvert Hall College High School and Notre Dame Preparatory School communities.
Mr. Shaffrey, who served as a Republican election judge for many years at the Brooklandville fire station, enjoyed playing bridge and collecting stamps and coins.
A Mass of Christian burial was offered at his church Monday.
Surviving are his wife of 38 years, the former Margaret Helen Mountain; four sons, Donald L. Shaffrey of Silver Spring, Kenneth M. Shaffrey of Glyndon, John B. Shaffrey of Clifton, Va., and Paul R. Shaffrey of Greensboro, N.C.; a daughter, Mary S. Brady of Arlington, Va.; a sister, Mary S. Termini of Charlotte, N.C.; six grandchildren; and a great-grandson. His first wife, the former Amparo Moreno Arango, died in 1969.