Sen. Charles Shannon, 61, chair of rules panel

Charles E. Shannon Jr., a resilient Winchester Democrat who left his bed in Massachusetts General Hospital in January to be sworn in for an eighth term in the state Senate, has died. He was 61.

Mr. Shannon, who had represented Winchester, Somerville, and Medford since 1991, died of heart failure yesterday at Mass. General, where he was being treated for an adverse reaction to the antirejection drugs he was taking after a bone marrow transplant in February to treat leukemia.

The former Lexington policeman survived previous bouts with bone cancer in 1990 and 2002, as well as a heart attack that cut short his career in law enforcement.

A big man who was upbeat despite his health problems, Mr. Shannon always seemed to have a smile on his face. ''Every day is a blessing," he said in a story published in the Globe in 2002, when he announced that his bone cancer was in remission after chemotherapy.

''He had the heart of a lion and he never gave up," his chief of staff, Sean J. Fitzgerald, said yesterday.

Mr. Shannon, reelected in November in an uncontested race, recently lobbied Governor Mitt Romney to win state funding for the renovation of Dilboy Field, a football stadium in Somerville that has seen better days. Romney announced in September that the stadium would get an $8 million face lift.

In January, Mr. Shannon wore a surgical mask to avoid infection when he was whisked from his hospital bed to the State House, where the oath of office was administered in a private ceremony in the governor's office.

''Massachusetts has lost a first-rate public servant who was a tireless fighter for those who did not have a voice," US Senator John F. Kerry said in a statement. ''My thoughts and prayers are with the Shannon family at this difficult time."

In a statement released yesterday, Romney offered his condolences and said he was committed to working with Mr. Shannon's family and the Legislature to name part of the newly renovated stadium in the late senator's honor.

Mr. Shannon originally entered the Senate as a Republican. At the urging of former US representative Joseph Kennedy, among others, he switched his allegiance to the Democratic Party in 1996.

''He found he was voting with the Democratic majority most of the time anyway," Fitzgerald said.

Born in Cambridge, Mr. Shannon graduated from Northeastern University. He was a police officer in Lexington for 20 years. He took early retirement following a heart attack, and in 1989, running as a Republican, he upset Democratic incumbent Sal Albano of Somerville to win a seat in the state Senate.

In 1997, at the urging of second-graders at Brown School in Somerville, Mr. Shannon filed legislation to have the Boston cream named the state's official doughnut. In 2003, when the bill was finally passed, Mr. Shannon joined the children, most of them by then eighth-graders at Kennedy School, to celebrate, and he took the opportunity to share an insider's view of the legislative process.

''He was a good guy and a great senator who treated everybody with respect, whether they were kids or senior citizens," Somerville's mayor, Joseph A. Curtatone, said yesterday.

Curtatone said Mr. Shannon wasn't a man who stood on ceremony. ''Everybody called him Charlie," he said. ''He didn't want to be called senator."

Mr. Shannon was chairman of the Senate Ethics and Rules Committee. He was also devoted to constituent services.

''He was the last of the ward healers, as he saw that people had jobs, that families didn't go hungry, and that the needs of his district were met," Fitzgerald said.

Though he was largely absent from the State House in recent months and worked with a cellphone and laptop from his hospital bed, Mr. Shannon still found a way for his voice to be heard. Last month, when the Senate was debating a bill endorsing stem cell research, he wrote a letter that was read to his colleagues on the Senate floor. ''This bill will help save lives," he wrote.

He leaves his wife, Dorothy (Powers); two sons, Michael H. of Medford and Charles E. 3d; a brother, William of Medford; and a sister, Martha DiChiappari of Medford.

A funeral Mass will be said at 1 p.m. Saturday in St. Eulalia's Church in Winchester. Burial will be in Wildwood Cemetery in Winchester.