Edmund Shea Jr., a pioneering investor who also co-founded residential construction giant Shea Homes in Walnut, has died. He was 80.

Shea died Friday of pulmonary fibrosis at his home in San Marino.

In the 1960s, Shea helped establish the construction company that would become Walnut-based Shea Homes, one of the nation’s largest privately owned for-profit home builders.

Before that, Shea had provided early stage capital for Hambrecht & Quist, which became a prominent San Francisco technology investment banking firm. During the next 40 years, Shea made early investments in hundreds of startups, including Activision, Adobe, and Genentech. He served as a director at Hambrecht & Quist until shortly before its acquisition by Chase Bank in 1998.

He was trained as an engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As an investor, he strived for patience and flexibility.

“He never ignored the human element in any decision, and was always willing to take a chance on people with character,” said Bill Hambrecht, cofounder of Hambrecht & Quist.

Robert A. Kotick, chief executive of Santa Monica’s Activision Blizzard Inc., considered Shea one of his mentors.

In 1958, together with his cousin John F. Shea and his brother Peter O. Shea, Shea formed J. F. Shea Co., Inc. as a successor to the family’s construction business, which their grandfather had begun in 1881 in Portland. The predecessor Shea companies were involved in the construction of iconic American public works projects such as the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate and San Francisco Bay bridges.

Shea Jr. was born Aug. 15, 1929 in Portland, Ore. In his early years, he lived in the San Francisco Bay area where his father supervised construction work on the piers for the Golden Gate. After moving to Los Angeles, he graduated from Loyola High School in 1947. Later, he enrolled in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a B.S. in civil engineering in 1952. He served in the United States Air Force for two years, which included a stint in electrical school.

He served on boards for Loyola Marymount University and Loyola High School, the Santa Catalina School in Monterey, California and Mayfield Senior School in Pasadena. In 2001, the UC Irvine Graduate School of Management awarded its Lifetime Achievement Award to Shea, his brother and his cousin.

He is survived by his wife of 52 years Mary Shea, brothers Peter of Newport Beach, and Henry of Stockton; sisters Margaret Deneher of Newport Beach, and Mary Elizabeth Callaghan of Los Angeles. He is also survived by six children: six children: Colleen Morrissey of Pacific Palisades; Edmund H. Shea III of Charlotte, NC; Mary McConnell of Pasadena; Kathleen High of San Marino; Timothy T. Shea of Santa Barbara; Ellen Dietrick of Newport Beach; and 14 grandchildren.

Visitation/Rosary will be from 5-8 p.m. Tuesday at St. Andrew’s Church, 311 N. Raymond, Pasadena. A funeral mass will be 3 p.m. Wednesday at the church, followed by a reception. In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent in Shea’s name to the Peter Claver Scholarship at Loyola High School or the Packard Center for ALS Research at Johns Hopkins: http://www.alscenter.org/donate/