Michael Lee Shores was born on Saturday, November 27th, 1954 in Oakland, California to Roy Lee Shores and Loretta Marie Shores (Junkin). After his first 4 years living in the Bay Area, his family moved to Seattle, Washington, where he grew up as an only child living in the West Seattle area. Michael's years growing up were filled with weekends and vacations of fishing, hunting, waterskiing, camping, and flying.

Michael learned to fly in the family Cessna 170, soloing in poor Seattle area weather conditions on the morning of his 16th birthday. Then on that same afternoon, he successfully passed the test for his driver's license. On his 17th birthday, in similar poor weather, he passed his Private Pilot flight test. Throughout his teen and early adult years, Michael had the opportunity to fly many different antique, classic, and custom-built aircraft across much of the central and western US. While in high school and college, he and his father built a VW powered Formula-Vee single-place racing aircraft, with its first flight in the spring of 1977. They also had a business building custom wood aircraft propellers.

After graduating from the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Science in Physics, in 1977, Michael began his career the next day at the Boeing Metrology Laboratory, in Seattle. Metrology, for those who are not familiar with the term, is the science of measurements. Throughout the next 20+ years, Michael became known worldwide for his engineering contribution towards making more accurate air data (airspeed and altitude) measurements. NAVAIR is still benefitting from his specific work, even to this day. As a result of his broad accomplishments at Boeing, Michael was awarded a Technical Fellowship position.

In 1989, as Michael and his late-wife, Debbie, were building their family through adoption, they founded a non-profit adoption organization, Friends in Adoption, to provide information, networking, and encouragement to other families navigating through the adoption processes in the Seattle area. They became widely known as adoption advocates by adoption caseworkers, state foster care caseworkers, and adoption attorneys throughout the Western Washington area.

After Michael and Sheree were married, on September 16th, 2000, they blended their two families together, building a new home in Eugene, Oregon, with Michael beginning a new career as an InkJet product engineer at Hewlett Packard. The next several years were filled with raising children, enjoying western Oregon activities, following Oregon Duck football, and driving his 1987 Porsche Carrera coupe on the country backroads.

Another career change, back into the field of metrology in 2007, took Michael to Boston Scientific Interventional Cardiology, near Minneapolis, Minnesota, and then a few months later to Southern Maryland, and to the Department of Defense, working in the NAVAIR METCAL Program Office at NAS Patuxent River. In February 2020, Michael retired from the DoD.

In 2010, following the devastating Haitian earthquake, Michael and his wife, Sheree, founded a Christian school located in a very poor rural village in Northwest Haiti, and launched Northwest Haiti Ministries, which has been a major focus of their lives since then. Over the years, the ministry has become self-sustaining, with many wonderful volunteers and supporting donors, and in his final years Michael has handed over the leadership into very capable hands for the future.

In his final years, Michael also greatly enjoyed fellowship with many friends at Faith Bible Church, as well as leading Bible studies and teaching.

While all of the above are some interesting details of Michael's life, the most important detail is that God captured Michael's attention in the Spring of 1993 and saved him. On that Sunday morning, the trajectory and focus of Michael's life changed. He began on a journey, over the next 27 years, to ever-increasingly grow in the love of and service to his Lord and Savior Jesus. And, in the end, he was definitely looking forward to the next phase of his life, living in eternity with his God.

Michael is survived by his wife, Sheree; a daughter, Becky, her husband, Colin, and their children, Hadley and Camden, of Boerne, TX; a daughter, Jessica, her husband, A.J., and their children, Lincoln and Parker, of King City, OR; a daughter, Katie, of Boca Raton, FL; a daughter, Lindsey, and her husband, Colin, of Portland, OR; a son, Jeff, his wife, Rebecca, and their children, Julia and James, of Bothell, WA; a daughter, Marcy, of San Diego, CA; a son, Matthew, of Eugene, OR; a son, Casey, of Hagerstown, MD; a son, Alex, of Lexington Park, MD; a son, Tim, and his wife, Mia, of Lexington Park, MD; and a son, Jeremy, of Lexington Park, MD.

Condolences to the family may be made at www.brinsfieldfuneral.com.