Blog

Life is like central Illinois weather – it changes in the blink of an eye. It did the night of March 12, 2006. 

O’Shea Team News interviewed Omar Sandoval, a senior at Centennial High School in Champaign, about job shadowing Superintendent Mike Thomas.

The O'Shea family's local roots go back to at least 1860, the year Abraham Lincoln was elected president and moved his office to what is now the Old State Capitol to accommodate the droves of people wanting to see him.

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.

Matt Grider has known the O’Shea name for as long as he can remember. His grandfather, Darrell Grider, had a 41-year career with O’Shea Builders starting in 1965.

Randle earned his Bachelor’s degree in engineering - construction management from Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville.

Ellie Kasparie’s father was not the type to tell his kids to stay away from his tools.

He’d bring Ellie and her four siblings to his family-owned construction company on many Saturdays while they were growing up and let them explore.

Zack Hogan and John Kovalan took to the stage in late July to present at the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology Conference.

Schmidt comes to O’Shea from Memorial Health System, where he worked for 12 years, most recently as CEO of Passavant Area Hospital in Jacksonville. During his career at Memorial, he was Manager of Information Technology Customer Support and served as Vice President of Facilities Management.

Get to know Devin Powell, Construction Administrator!

O’Shea Builders started when John Timothy O’Shea (O’Shea President Mike O’Shea’s great-grandfather) listed himself as a contractor in the Springfield, Illinois City Directory in 1900.

     His parents, James and Johanna O’Shea, immigrated to the United States in 1852 from Ireland, at the end of its devastating potato famine. About two million Irish fled here to escape hunger and poverty, according to the Library of Congress.