Ronnie Cusack

Ronnie Cusack, born Ronnie Lozowick at Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, passed away on July 29, 2026, surrounded by the family she spent her whole life building. Daughter of Frank and Lilly Lozowick and sister to Lisa, Ronnie met the love of her life, Bob Cusack, sixty-four years ago, and the two were married on June 18, 1966 — a union that would grow deeper for sixty years. Together they raised two children, Sean and Heather, in Friendswood, Texas. Years later, once the children were grown, Ronnie and Bob moved to Austin to be closer to family. When Sean married Melyssa and Heather married Alan, Ronnie gained not just a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law, but two more children she loved every bit as fiercely as her own. Ronnie was, above all else, a devoted wife, mother, and “Nanny” to her five grandchildren.

Sixty-four years ago, two very young soul mates found each other, and nothing was ever the same again. That is where our mom's story really begins — not with a birth certificate or a hometown, but with the moment she met Bob Cusack. Ronnie was born Ronnie Lozowick at Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, the daughter of Frank and Lilly and the sister of Lisa. But it was meeting our dad that set the course for the rest of her life. There were family dynamics working against them, forces that didn't want this relationship to happen at all. It didn't matter. Their love was too strong, too immediate, too certain for anyone to stand in the way of it. On June 18, 1966, they were married, and from that day on we have never witnessed a love affair like theirs. Sixty years of marriage later, she was still holding his hand every day, still looking at him like it was the first day they met.

In 1970 they welcomed their son, Sean, and three years later, their daughter, Heather. From that moment on, her family was everything — the only thing that truly mattered. Leaving her entire extended family behind in New Jersey to build a new life in Friendswood, Texas, was not easy for a woman so rooted in her people. But she went, because that's where Bob's opportunity was, and because being a wife and mother was the role she had been waiting for her whole life.

And what a mother she was. She poured everything she had into Bob and into Sean and Heather. She became friends with all of her children's friends. Kids didn't just come to the house looking for Sean or Heather — they came looking for her, too, because she always had a smile waiting, always asked about everyone's day, always found a way to put a smile on someone's face. Being a mom wasn't something she did. It was who she was.

And her family kept growing in the best way. When Sean married Melyssa and Heather married Alan, Ronnie didn't think of them as in-laws — she thought of them as hers. She loved them the way she loved Sean and Heather: completely, without conditions, and without ever needing a reason. They weren't just welcomed into the family. To her, they simply were the family, and she never once let them wonder about that.

Her other great love, alongside her family, was dogs. Muffin was her first — she called her “my furry child,” and that dog was the center of her world. Then came Buttons, loved just as fiercely, and later Casey. And it didn't stop with her own dogs. She loved Sean's dogs over the years — Sammy, Cooper, Max, Willie, and Duke — and Heather's dogs, Barron and Buddy, with that same unwavering, all-in devotion. If you were a dog in this family, Ronnie loved you like her own — honestly, if you ever had to choose between one of us and one of the dogs, we're not fully confident how fast she'd pick us.

Then came the grandchildren, and something in her lit up all over again. Sean's three boys — Taylor, Ryan, and Brayden — and Heather's two boys — Logan and Tanner — became “Nanny Ronnie's” new reason for living. She told every one of them, every time she saw them, how special they were, how much she loved them, how beautiful and handsome and amazing they were. She was, without question, the best back-tickler in the family, and every grandchild who ever climbed up next to her knew exactly what they were there for — subtlety was never really part of the pitch.

Several years ago, she and Bob moved to Austin to be closer to Sean and Heather and all five grandchildren, closing the three-hour gap that had separated them for so long. It was one of the best decisions they ever made.

Anyone who knew her well knew certain things to be absolutely true. She loved Christmas so much that if she'd had her way, the decorations would have stayed up all year long. She could — and would — watch Hallmark Christmas movies three hundred and sixty-five days a year, plot twists and all, even though we're fairly sure she could have narrated every single one from memory by now. She loved needlepoint, puzzles, and quiet afternoons at home. She was, famously, one of the pickiest eaters any of us have ever met — a hamburger with only onions, the basics from the Chinese food menu, chicken parmigiana, plain macaroni with butter, and absolutely anything sweet. Trying new foods was never really her thing; asking her to try something unfamiliar was roughly as easy as asking her to go skydiving, and we loved teasing her about eating like a kid, because she genuinely did, right down to negotiating for an extra piece of candy like she was still nine years old.

To people who didn't know her well, she could seem quiet, even shy. But to the people she loved, she was warm, funny, endlessly present, and capable of loving harder and more completely than almost anyone we have ever known. She had a particular, playful sense of humor and a way of finding something amusing in nearly everything around her. And despite spending most of her adult life in the Texas heat, she loved the cold and brought it up like clockwork every single summer, as though 100-degree August weather were a personal betrayal she hadn't quite gotten over — she would have traded it all for snow if she could.

Thanksgiving and Christmas time were her favorite time of the year, not for the food or the decorations, but because that's when her whole family was together in one room. That, in the end, was really the whole story of her life: Bob, and their children, and their grandchildren, and the dogs who loved them all. Sixty years after they married on June 18, 1966 — and sixty-four years after two young soul mates first found each other against every odd stacked in front of them — she was still exactly where she wanted to be, beside him, holding his hand.

She is survived by her husband of 60 years, Bob; her son, Sean, and his wife, Melyssa; her daughter, Heather, and her husband, Alan; and her grandchildren, Taylor, Ryan, Brayden, Logan, and Tanner. She was preceded in death by her parents, Frank and Lilly Lozowick, and her sister, Lisa.

We love you, Mom. We'll see you again.