This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.

Chris Shane: His Way

What does Chris Shane have in common with Frank Sinatra? Well, just like “Ol’ Blue Eyes,” Chris likes doing things his way. Thus, we have the timing of this story.

Often, the subject for Person of the Week is somebody who has just been chosen to head an organization or lead a charity drive. However, Chris insisted on waiting to be interviewed until he stepped down as president of the Ivoryton Alliance. Chris served as the group’s first head until he recently left the job.

“I did it for 25 years. I was getting too old,” he says.

Lorraine Donovan is now the president of the Ivoryton Alliance, which puts on the light show at the Ivoryton Green during the holiday season and also organizes the town’s Fourth of July Parade.

Chris remains very much involved with Ivoryton. He now owns and operates the Ivoryton Tavern. Jim and Nan Crowell, who had run the restaurant for many years, sold it and moved to Florida five years ago. As of last February, Chris became the man in charge.

The chef remains the same, but much in the restaurant is different. Chris points out that he is now working in a completely renovated kitchen. In fact, the Ivory Tavern closed for five months during the remodeling.

Chris describes the menu as like a pub in his native England.

“It’s not a place to order escargots. It’s pub food, good pub food, and a pub atmosphere. Friendly, congenial,” he says. “It’s community oriented, family oriented, just like it was when Jim and Nan owned it.”

Chris says that his two sisters who still live in the north of England tell him that he sounds American, but on this side of the Atlantic, his accent is still obviously from somewhere else. In fact, he says his north-of-England accent was one of the reasons he left his native country.

“I had the wrong accent. You’re from the north, people think you are stupid,” he explains.

However, the accent did not prevent Chris from graduating from the University of Oxford, where he majored in history.

“Oxford was a big break. It gives you immediate credibility,” he says.

Still, even with a prestigious degree, Chris was unsure of his future. He worked for a brief period as a salesman for a dog food company which had come to Oxford to interview undergraduates.

Then he got a better offer: a scholarship studying history at the University of Waterloo in Canada with financial benefits which amounted to three times as much as his salesman’s salary.

“I would have been a fool not to take it,” he says.

Even with a master’s degree, Chris was not through with school.

“I needed an MBA,” he says.

Chris knew just where he wanted to get it.

“I went to Oxford. That was the best. Now I wanted to go to Harvard. That was the best. I got the best education,” he says.

Chris concentrated on finance in his business degree, working in Canada, Bermuda, and finally in asset management in Farmington. From there, he set up his own firm: Essex Asset Management. The choice of location was purposeful. His wife Jaime grew up in Essex. The couple met at Harvard when she, too, was attending business school. They now have a grown son and daughter.

On Saturday mornings in the season, Chris watches soccer, but not local teams. He is on the internet watching the team he grew up with from Middlesbrough in England. (He points out that Jacqui Hubbard, executive director of the Ivoryton Playhouse, grew up in the same area.) Chris admits that the team is not doing particularly well, but since he was born there, he always supports them.

On Sundays, Chris often plays the violin as part the service at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Essex. He played as a young man in England, even rising to become assistant concert master of the local orchestra in his area, the Teeside Symphony.

Chris goes to mass daily and visits ill parishioners, bringing communion to some who cannot get to services. He plans an upcoming pilgrimage to sites in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Chris has already visited shrines in Mexico, in addition to taking a significant visit to Mudjurogje in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In fact, his trip to Medjruogje to mourn the loss of his father was a turning point for his spiritual growth.

“It changed my life,” he says. “I can’t imagine a life without faith.”

Chris has not gone on one of the most famous pilgrimages—the one to Santiago de Compostella in Spain—because the long pilgrims’ walk to the shrine is now more than he thinks his knees can handle.

As a child, Chris considered becoming a priest.

“My mother, she was Irish, and she wanted a priest in the family, but she pushed too hard, so I resisted,” he recalls.

Chris has been an American citizen for many years, and he certainly enjoys living in Ivoryton.

“It is a wonderful country. I can’t imagine living anywhere else,” he says. “Anywhere else but Ivoryton.”