Born to Build Blog

O’Shea recently participated in Sangamon-Menard Schools’ Multi-Craft Core Curriculum (MC3) program during fall 2019. The MC3 is a nationally recognized apprenticeship-readiness training curriculum that offers hands-on-learning and a pathway toward a construction career apprenticeship.

O’Shea’s “Iron Man,” a.k.a. Tim VanBrooker, is “officially” retired. O’Shea Team News sat down with Tim and Mike O’Shea to talk about a few career highlights.

The O’Shea family has been building churches longer than it’s had a construction business. According to family lore, Timothy O’Brien, the uncle of O’Shea Builders founder John O’Shea, built Springfield’s first St. Agnes Church and taught John carpentry.

In John Adams’ family, if you were old enough to carry a tool, you got to come along on the job.

John’s grandfather, Norbert, grew up on a farm and, by necessity, taught himself general construction. When he saw there was a need in the area, he began a residential construction company, which he operated for 40 years.

Bud O’Shea, CEO of O’Shea Builders, was drafted into the Army during the Cold War. After basic training in March 1957 in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and specialized training in August, Georgia, Bud was shipped out to Stuttgart, Germany.

In between, he got married to his sweetheart, Helene Eddington. “On my first leave, I proposed marriage to her and we were married at Fort Gordon in Augusta, Georgia at an Army chapel,” he says.