Heywood Shelley, 90
In 58 years of practicing law, one highlight of Heywood Shelley’s distinguished career was his representing the New York Mets, including writing the lease for Shea Stadium. His firm, Carter, Ledyard, and Milburn, “had a box just four back from the Mets dugout,” his daughter, Alexandra Shelley, wrote in a eulogy, “behind that of the Whitney family, who owned the team, but in front of Donald Trump’s.” She and her father went to every opening day at Shea from the time she was 6.
Mr. Shelley, a summertime resident of Sag Harbor for many years, died at home in Brooklyn on April 3. He was 90 and had experienced a number of complications, including lung infections, as he was wheelchair-bound and hospitalized for a year after he was hit by a car on Bridgehampton’s Main Street on Jan. 18, 2009.
“He lived over nine years and about 3,248 Scrabble games beyond what was predicted,” his daughter said.
A lifelong progressive named after the crusading journalist Heywood Broun, as an attorney in the early 1950s he successfully defended, pro bono, the black activist Douglas (Roosevelt) Turner Ward, a playwright and founder of the Negro Ensemble Company, against trumped-up charges of draft evasion, going on to write the Supreme Court briefs on Mr. Ward’s behalf.
His clients ranged from major real estate companies — although he did not share George H.W. Bush’s politics, he treasured a letter from the president thanking him for his work on a transaction in Kennebunkport — to American Express, UPS, and, locally, the Bridgehampton Road Races Corporation.
“He also did legal work for the British Mary Rose Trust, a group which raised from the watery depths off Portsmouth the 16th-century Mary Rose warship, now a museum,” Ms. Shelley wrote. “As a result of this work, he was invited to Buckingham Palace, where, he reported, they served Sanka after dinner and Prince Charles complained to him about how litigious the Americans were.”
Mr. Shelley was born in Forest Hills, Queens, on May 2, 1927, one of three children of Robert Shelley and the former Jessie Sinick. His father, who made and lost a lot of money in real estate, habitually bet on the ponies.
In her eulogy, Ms. Shelley recounted how one night when her grandfather was at a poker game, a burglar came to the door, and her father, who was 12 at the time, grabbed the family rifle. “This gun is loaded, and I ain’t fooling!” he shouted in defense of the household, with his sister at his side and his mother asleep. “What really impresses me is that my father, who went on to set the record for English commendations at Richmond Hill High School, had the presence of mind to throw in the ‘ain’t,’ ” she wrote.
In fact, he considered himself the dunce of the family for being the oldest to graduate from high school — all of 16.
Mr. Shelley went on to serve for a time as a classification specialist in the Army, getting discharged in 1947. He graduated from Columbia College and Columbia Law School, and on Dec. 31, 1959, married Maritza Shelley, who survives him.
He joined Carter, Ledyard, and Milburn in 1951 and still worked full time for the firm at the time of the 2009 accident. He had recently had knee-replacement surgery and was looking forward to getting back on the tennis court.
In recent years he’d had dementia, but didn’t suffer, Ms. Shelley said. He continued to sing — “particularly perky, depressing songs, like ‘Goodnight, Irene’ and ‘Don’t Get Around Much Anymore’ ” — and in his wheelchair would accompany his wife for breakfast, take in the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, and visit the local Starbucks, where just a month ago he broke out into his favorite, “You Are My Sunshine.” The other regulars joined in, followed by applause.
In addition to his wife and daughter, both of Brooklyn, Mr. Shelley is survived by a granddaughter. A red maple will be planted in his memory in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on May 2. Memorial donations have been suggested to the Southern Poverty Law Center, 400 Washington Avenue, Montgomery, Ala. 36104.