Sheila Jean May

Sheila May was born and raised in Rudyard Michigan. She was the eldest of 4 children, brothers Jeff and Eric and sister, Norma. She was always anxious to explore the United States and left home after graduating High School. She left with a friend and moved to Kenosha, Wisconsin. It was there that she met and married, Greg May. They had 2 children together, Don and Shannon. Sheila loved to get in the car and drive for days. Every winter she and her 2 children would make the drive from Wisconsin to Florida to visit her Uncle Billy. Greg was a talented tattoo artist and moved the family to Lake Geneva Wisconsin in 1969. Greg opened the Lake Geneva Tattooing Co., that still stands today. Sheila was a waitress there, until she opened lake Geneva's first Health Food store, which she ran for a couple years. Sheila was always into nutrition and being healthy from the time she was 5 years old. She rarely drank and would often have a refrigerator filled with healthy foods. Her children were probably the first to east frozen yogurt in the 70's. Unfortunately, the building that housed her health food store had a fire and was later reopened as an addition to an existing movie theatre. It was at this time that Greg taught Sheila how to tattoo. She and Greg amicably, split in 1977 and Sheila, with her 2 children, moved to San Francisco. Sheila worked for the famous Lyle Tuttle at this time. The shop was your typical tattoo shop at the time, customers mostly consisting of bikers and a rough crowd. Sheila had a German Shepard, named Raja, at the time that served as her bodyguard and on 2 occasions, late at night, Raja did in fact protect her. It was on a weekend road trip to Santa Monica, that Sheila decided to move to Southern California. She and her 2 children moved to Santa Monica, where she picked up work doing hand drawn tattoos on people for costumes. To make ends meet, Sheila would often fly back to Wisconsin and work for her ex-husband in his shop. In 1980 Sheila moved to Beverly Hills and promoted herself as doing "Women’s Pastel Tattoos" in order trying to shy away from the rough crowd she often experienced in tattoo shops. It was at this time when a friend of her expressed, "I wish you could tattoo my make-up on me" The idea was born and Sheila and her 2 children moved to Pacific Palisades, California. She spent months researching the right pigments to mix and pioneered the permanent makeup industry as we know it today. She even made up the word "Dermapigmentation." Throughout her career she tattooed many famous celebrities and people from all walks of life and around the globe. It was James Brown, that took a limo to her office the minute he was released from jail, to see her. He needed his eyebrows done, due to his early career as a boxer. This story was featured in The Total Tattoo Book by Amy Krakow. Sheila went on to do several tv talk shows and was featured in several magazines throughout her career. She never lost her love for road trips and would often take off for several days, if not weeks at a time exploring the country. It was on one of these trips that she fell in love with Cayucos, California, where she rented a home, with an astounding view of the Pacific Ocean, where she would end up residing for more than a decade. She kept her office in Pacific Palisades and made the trip down, monthly to see her clients. Sheila and her son spent many trips looking for a home for Sheila to buy. She and a friend, Loren “Woody” Woodward, took such a trip, in 2015, where she fell in love with a ranch home in Weed, Ca. It was just 2 weeks after her purchase of the ranch home in Weed, California, aka Edgewood, California, that Sheila was diagnosed with a rare cancer. Five months later, her eldest child, Don was also diagnosed with cancer and passed away on April 30th, 2016. Which would later be the exact same date, 6 years later, that Sheila passed. Same hospital. Dons was very devastating to Sheila. She was a fighter though, sand she continued to fight her cancer, often doing the 4-hour drive from Cayucos to Pacific Palisades, alone to see her doctors. As she struggled with her disease, the pandemic struck and she put it on hold to move into her home in Weed, Ca. aka Edgewood, Ca. Unfortunately, she passed before she ever had the chance to move into that home. Sheila was cremated in May of 2022 and at the time survived by her family: Shannon (daughter), Norma (sister) Jeff (brother and his wife, Eda) Eric (brother) and her nieces and nephews (Mark, Chad, Ricky and Krissy), as well as her mother, Lilith Palo. Unfortunately, Lilith, passed away on October 9th, 2022.

Sheila’s ashes were retained by her friend Loren, and it is the family’s hope that they were spread next to the creek, on the property of the home she loved so much and never had the opportunity lived in, as this is where she wanted her final destination to be.

As of the writing of this obituary, podcaster Jack Watts, reached out to feature Sheila in one of his podcast episodes of Tattoo Traditions and we look forward to hearing that.

Through her many friends, family and clients, Sheila and her work, kindness, and generosity, will live on forever in our hearts and minds.

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