Robert’s Obituary Life of Robert Edward McCann Robert Edward McCann, died on May 15, 2019. He celebrated his 91st birthday last October, so he had the good fortune of a long and mostly healthy life, and he shared just shy of 70 years of it married to his one true love, my mother, Helen. Robert’s father, Frank, who had come to Texas from Santa Rosa, California while on assignment with the Army Air Corps during World War I, married an East Texas girl, Lilla Mae Born, in 1918.
Rather than move back to California, after a few years in Houston they moved close to Lilla’s home in East Texas. Robert was born on October 22, 1927 on Sedberry Street in Marshall, the fifth of the six children they had as they scratched out a meager existence. When the Great Depression began in 1929, East Texas, with its agriculture-based economy, was hit very hard.
Robert spent his childhood like many others during that time, in poverty, with the family tenant farming and barely getting by, at times living in government subsidized housing. Robert’s father found work in a New Deal work camp near Linden, Texas in 1935, which helped put some food on the table. But in August of 1936, when Robert was nine years old, his father died, leaving the family in dire straits.
The family was saved from homelessness when Robert’s grandmother in California, Hallie McCann, sent most of her life savings of $1,500 to buy 53 acres of land (with a small house on it) south of Marshall, where the family could live rent free and grow their food. Robert’s mother was remarried in 1940 to a man named Earl Gibson, who had served as a pilot commanding a squadron of biplanes in Europe during World War I, and had never been married. By all accounts he was a wonderful man and an excellent stepfather.
Robert attended Marshall High School during World War II, and after he graduated at age 17 in 1945, he spent the summer working to repair ships at the Mare Island Navy Yard in California while staying with his grandmother. When he turned 18 in October, 1945, the war had just ended, and Robert joined the Air Force within a month. Robert served in the Air Force for 20 years, starting in Germany, with assignments in Illinois, Louisiana, Japan, France, Massachusetts, Italy, and Montana.
During that time, he and Helen had three children. The first child, Robert Jr., died of complications from measles at age four, since there was no vaccine available at the time. After the last assignment in Montana, the family returned to the land in East Texas.
Robert went to work for the Post Office and worked there until 1984. Robert returned to his farming roots and stayed busy by growing a large vegetable garden every year and keeping a small herd of cattle. After years spent away at college, both surviving children, Linda and Donna eventually returned to the family land with their spouses to build houses and raise their own families, so Robert and Helen had the pleasure of helping their five grandchildren, Aaron, Kelly, Brian, Jeff, and Kate grow up while surrounded by the beauty of nature.
Having come from such impoverished beginnings, Robert was clearly proud as all of his children and grandchildren completed high school in Marshall, then went on to earn college degrees and seek opportunity in distant cities to continue the circle of life. Robert was able to enjoy spending time with five great grandchildren before his passing; Emma and Colin Boucher, and Marie, William, and Robert Alfano.
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