Doris Ann "Tanya" Ware McCall

Doris Ann “Tanya” Ware McCall, 83, of San Antonio, died peacefully Wednesday, May 20th, of complications from non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Born in Omaha, Nebraska April 29th, 1943, to Frederick John Harper Ware and Clara Louise Abbott, she lived a childhood of adventure and exploration near 72nd and Dodge, then the outskirts of Omaha where few streets were paved and even fewer houses were built.

A childhood devotee of the Lone Ranger, she shot BB guns and pretended that low tree limbs were horses until, in her Westside high school years, she was given a horse of her own, Topaz, to whom she occasionally fed ice cream cones and cared for until she left for the University of Nebraska Lincoln in 1961. Briefly working as a model, then later as a features, architecture and science and weather reporter for the Omaha World-Herald, in the early 1980s she married cardiologist Dr. David McCall and moved to San Antonio with her now-cartoonist son Chris.

Doris spent the balance of her life in Texas tenaciously gardening and sustaining several hundred plants in San Antonio’s hot climate, tuning her yard and house to pitch perfection while trading friendly talk with the workmen who helped her keep it that way (and whom she counted as friends.) A devoted reader and lifetime subscriber to the New Yorker, she kept up with non-fiction writers and contemporary essayists, her library table stacked with books both read and as-of-yet-to read.

She is survived by David, Chris, daughter-in-law Marnie Ware and granddaughter Clara Ware; stepson Mark McCall, wife Samantha and grandson Connor McCall. Predeceased by her brother Dr. Frederick Ware, Jr. and his children Mary, Sally, Nicholas and Benjamin, survived by nieces and nephews Fred, Tom, Dana, Andrea and cousins Eric Wilson and Temmy Bowman.

No service is offered because she didn’t want one, but if you grow plants, please water them carefully and if you’d like, a contribution in her memory could be made to the Morris Animal Foundation and/or the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.