Longtime friend and member of the Bluegrass Dive Club, Michael J. McCann passed away October 20, 2022. Michael brought the BGDC forward in its journey to more effectively communicate with its members and the dive community with the creation and introduction of the club’s website, online and email group email communication, and with online club trip registrations and membership. These are but some of the club centered accomplishments. Michael and Sherry were active in the club, its activities, fellowship, and its travel.
Michael’s family shared the following:
Friends and family: our beloved patriarch and my amazing father Michael J McCann passed away this morning peacefully after a short battle with lung cancer which had spread to his brain. We became aware of the tumors last Friday and were in shock as the day before he had been with his doctor and had been declared cancer free. He spent the last few days surrounded by his loving wife SherryJones McCann and his children and grand children.
We are so blessed to have had “Poppy” as our father/grandfather/husband/brother/uncle and more. My father came from very humble beginnings as a child in Chicago, Illinois to become an executive of IBM who later helped lead a merger between IBM and Motorola called ARDIS which developed the first wireless data network in the U.S. He retired from IBM/ARDIS and was later summoned to lead Candle Software Corp which was ironically later sold to IBM.
While my dad was a brilliant software engineer who got his start as an Air Force radar technician and later as a typewriter repairman for IBM, his passion has always been traveling and exploring new places with his wife of 35 years, Sherry. Together they explored countless countries and my dad would post every day from a new exciting location with what he had learned so he could share it with his friends and family. He was a scuba diver for more than 40 years until COVID put a damper on his travel plans for the last two years. My dad was always the one diver who would spend his entire dive focused on one small sea creature that he would video in amazement only to show it to us later and recount every detail.
My dad was the webmaster for the Bluegrass Dive club for many years and was also an avid bridge player. I am sure his incredible mind loved strategizing and beating his fellow bridge players.
My dad also loved his family deeply. He was passionate about his children and grandchildren and loved more than anything watching them swim and frolic in his backyard pool which he built just to have a place for our family to gather.
This picture was just a few weeks ago on Labor Day weekend at his house in Lexington, Kentucky where we had no idea that I would be writing this post today. He had just finished chemo and was preparing for surgery to remove a tumor and his prognosis was excellent.
Life can change just that quickly and, while we are all so fortunate to have had the time we did, there will never be enough.
In honor of my father’s life I would ask that you become a member of your local PBS station and to tell someone that you love them today.
He will be deeply missed by all that knew and treasured him.
The complete obituary can be found at: Michael McCann Obituary (1942 – 2022) – Lexington, KY – Lexington Herald-Leader (legacy.com)
Private services will be held at Camp Nelson National Cemetery for the immediate family. A “Celebration of Life” will be held on Sunday, November 27th, 2022, at their home from 2-6PM. In lieu of flowers, Mike has requested that donations be made to Hospice of the Bluegrass, or Kentucky Educational Television (KET).