Marion Arlo "Mac" McGEHEE

MCGEHEE, BAY, MORRIS, HUNTER, KOROUSH

Posted By: Sharon R Becker (email)
Date: 4/1/2009 at 13:14:56

OBITUARY - MARION ARLO "MAC" McGEHEE

After suffering for several years with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Marion Arlo "Mac" McGEHEE passed away in the early morning hours of Tuesday, January 17, 2006. He was 81.

Mac was born in Mount Ayr, in south-central Iowa, the fourth of six children, on September 24, 1924. During his infancy his family moved to Colorado, where his father Ward worked as a foreman on his cousin Carl BAY's sheep ranch; while in Colorado a sister and another brother were born, and sometime after 1930 the family returned to Mount Ayr, where Mac grew up and finished high school just in time to enter the U.S. Army in hopes of serving in the Second World War. Although his hopes of becoming an officer in the Air Corps fell through, that endeavor enabled him to meet Eileen MORRIS while taking college-level courses at the university in Missoula, Montana; they were married in Victorville, California on June 10, 1944.

After the war Mac and Eileen lived in Denver for a time -- where their first son, Marion Daniel, was born in June 1945. Sadly, Danny was hydrocephalic, and died the following April in Missoula, where he is buried. Later the McGEHEES settled in California, where sons Brian and Kevin were born in San Jose. After a brief sojourn in Salinas, the family moved to Sacramento.

Mac worked a variety of jobs -- managing motels, working building maintenance, in credit and accounting positions, even tending bar. Over the years he became acquainted with such well-knowns as Slim PICKENS and Robert CONRAD.

Family life for Mac and Eileen deteriorated during the 1970s, and the two finally divorced in the early 1980s, after both sons were out of high school. Mac went on to marry Geraldine (HUNTER) KOROUSH, herself recently divorced. They eventually divorced as well, but as Mac's health failed Geri stood by him and spent many a day by his bedside during the last months of his life.