Marian Jane O’Connor, nee McReynolds, of Rocky River, aged 85, passed away at the Lutheran Home at Concord Reserve on Friday, June 26, 2020. Private, family-only, graveside service at Holy Cross Cemetery. Marian was born May 6, 1935, in Cleveland, Ohio to William Charles McReynolds (son of Charles and Bertha Minnie Catherine Atkin/Ogle) and Jeanette “Jane” Bender (daughter of Charles Bender and Florence Pennick), sister of Ella May Zavodnik, nee McReynolds.
Prior, during and just after the war years Marian grew up in Hough, but in the late 40s and early 1950s, she and her sister lived on a farm in Auburn, Ohio where they attended elementary school, and Marian spent the first years of high school at Chagrin Falls before coming back to Hough to finish high school at East High School in Cleveland in 1953. Her sister started dating a musician who played at all the local dances, and it was at one of these dances that she started going out with the close friend of that musician. They dated and she became his fiancé, who subsequently converted to Catholicism and then married Michael Joseph O’Connor in 1956, (and her sister Ella married that talented musician friend, Joseph Francis Zavodnik, in 1957). They honeymooned in New England (the picture is of them looking forward to their new life together which was taken on that honeymoon), then returned home to start life in Newbury, but a few years after Michael Jr.’s birth in 1958, they moved to Lakewood. There the O’Connor home was the site of many joyous summertime, weekend, and holiday family events for many years. After Michael Jr. started college, they moved to Rocky River where she resided until a recent illness and hospitalization forced her to seek rehabilitation at the Lutheran Home at Concord Reserve in Westlake.
Mike “Sonny” O’Connor, (son of Michael O’Connor, b. near Ballylongford, Co. Kerry in 1899, and Jane Kelly, b. Co. Leitrim, in 1900) became a skilled computer/tape-controlled machinist in the 60s, (until his early death from Leukemia in 1986), while Marian worked evenings in various banking “backroom” operations so she could be home with her son during the day. Later she was employed in several bookkeeping/accounting positions (earning her Associate of Applied Business in Accounting at CCC) for local industries and organizations. Her son Michael married Cecilia Ann Gerrity in 1988, and soon Marian was a very proud grandmother to two grandsons, Sean Tomaltach and Morgan Turlough, and two granddaughters, Ceara Aine and Moira Sinead O’Connor. Always very supportive of the educational goals of her family, she not only was always supportive of her son’s educational goals, bachelors, masters, and doctorate (he was until recently a tenured professor of emergency management for SUNY) but also helped to provide significant support for all four of her grandchildren’s education goals as well, (BGSU, Miami, OU/EMU, and Miami again).
She enjoyed travel, starting with a road trip to the New England states in 1956 on her honeymoon (pictured), then vacationing with her husband and son during his youth in the mid-Atlantic and tidewater regions, mother and son also vacationed to Ireland upon her retirement, and later she enjoyed flying off with her grandchildren on mini-vacations (Disney World, Nashville, St. Louis, etc.). She was also very fond of hearing of her son’s genealogical discoveries about the various branches of the family tree: from early founders of New England to Revolutionary War families to early pioneers of Pennsylvania and Ohio, to Civil War-era relatives (some listed inside Cleveland’s Soldier and Sailors Monument on Public Square), and many other lines which have been successfully traced back to Ireland, Scotland, England, Netherlands, Germany, and other European nations!
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