Harry S. Shelley was born in Baltimore, MD, in 1901. The only son of a doctor, he grew up driving his father on house calls. As an undergraduate at Drexel, he majored in engineering and worked as an electrical engineer for several years before entering medical school at the University of Maryland.

In the early 1930s, Shelley joined the Maryland National Guard, and when World War II began, he was assigned to 101st Evacuation Hospital of the U.S. Third Army. He was with the hospital unit that landed at Omaha Beach on June 15, 1944-nine days after D-Day. The 101st unit treated approximately 22,000 patients during the next year.

After the war, Dr. Shelley came to Nashville to work as a urologist and surgeon at the Thayer Veterans Administration Hospital. He became Associate Professor of Urology at Vanderbilt and trained many residents in urology. When he retired in 1967, Dr. Shelley became volunteer curator of the Vanderbilt Medical Library's History of Medicine Collection. Dr. Shelley was an avid book collector and amateur bookbinder. He also taught a class on the History of Medicine at Vanderbilt Medical School. Dr. and Mrs. Shelley donated their valuable collection of rare books on urology and surgery to the Eskind Medical Library.