Marian Lois Hannon

Marian I. Hannon, Tireless Volunteer and Tenacious Competitor, Dies

From a backyard roller coaster in St. Paul to decades of civic work in Arizona, she made community her calling.

Marian I. Hannon, a business manager turned community stalwart who balanced a sweet, soft‑spoken manner with a fierce competitive streak on the court and in the pool — and who was known to hundreds in Masonic youth circles as “Mom Hannon” — has died, her family said.

Born in St. Paul, Minn., in January 1936, Ms. Hannon was the youngest of four daughters in a bustling household where ingenuity doubled as amusement. Her father, an engineer, built the girls a roller coaster out of the fourth-story window of their house, for summer play. Winters brought other rites of passage: she learned to drive on a frozen lake and waited each spring with her sisters for the ice to thaw so they could swim in the icy cold waters.

At 13, at Wilson High School, she met her lifelong match, Robert (Bob) Hannon. They were bandmates and crowned king and queen of St. Paul/Minneapolis Winter Carnival — an early hint that they would be a pair for the long haul. After high school and business school, she went to work as an administrative assistant to a corporate chief executive, trading shorthand and schedules with the same precision she would later bring to ledgers and league standings.

The Hannons married in 1957 and, in a black ’57 Chevy with red upholstery and no air‑conditioning, drove across the summer desert to Arizona, where Mr. Hannon had work with his family. They settled in Tucson in 1960, started the family business, and ran it for more than four decades, operating offices in Tucson — including one central and on the city’s southeast side — as well as at Fort Huachuca and in Show Low. Ms. Hannon managed the books and the insurance arm; the practical backbone of an enterprise that helped anchor the family’s life.

Service, not status, was her public vocation. For years, she volunteered with the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, teaching food storage and home skills. She trained elementary school students in the Character Counts! program and rose to leadership in Family and Community Education (FCE), serving as Arizona state president and later on the national board. In recognition of her work strengthening families through education, leadership development and civic action, she received FCE’s national “Heart of FCE” award.

Athletics were her private engine. A high‑school swimmer, Ms. Hannon once posted what her family recalls was a world‑record time in the butterfly at the University of Minnesota pool — before such marks were formally tracked there — and a coach urged her to try for the Olympics. Competition never left her. She became a devoted tennis player, winning USTA age‑group tournaments well into her 70s, and kept a bowler’s league schedule in later years on a team cheekily named “Two Men and a Gal.” If she wasn’t playing, she was watching. For more than 30 years, the Hannons held University of Arizona football and basketball tickets, and at home, almost any sport — from figure skating to horseshoes — could find its way onto the television.

Plants responded to her care as readily as people did. She tended gardens that drew hummingbirds to her windows, a pastime that filled her later days with color and motion. Indoors, her hands were just as deft. An avid seamstress, she made clothes and quilts and sewed diapers for young mothers. She crocheted, played cards with friends, and did puzzles with her family. She loved music and would whistle and sing along to all her favorite songs.

Faith was another through line. Longtime members and volunteers at their church, Catalina Methodist in Tucson, she and Mr. Hannon, among other roles, oversaw the Methodist Youth Fellowship, mentoring young people in their congregation.

Ms. Hannon and her husband were longtime members of Masonic fraternal organizations. She belonged to the Order of the Eastern Star, attended High 12 International meetings, and traveled with Mr. Hannon as he served in his state and national roles in Scottish Rite and DeMolay International. Along the way, she earned the affectionate honorific “Mom Hannon” from young men and women across the country.

Her philanthropy was personal. A survivor of multiple heart attacks who lived for decades after a quadruple bypass, she supported the American Heart Association as a member of its Circle of Red. In Tucson, she favored causes that tended to the vulnerable and to children’s futures, including Youth On Their Own and the University of Arizona Wings on Words Child Language Clinic.

Preceded in death by her parents, her sisters Betty Marchio, Peggy Murphy and Celia Lofquist, and her son, Kenny Hannon, she is survived by her husband, Robert Hannon; her daughter, Kerry Stratford; her son‑in‑law, Herb Stratford; and her grandson, Matthew Stratford, sister-in-law Barbara DiCataldo, as well as many nieces and nephews and their families across the country.

Her family remembers her as both gentle and formidable — a bookkeeper with a competitor’s heart, a volunteer with a knack for building teams, a mother figure whose steady presence made room for others to grow.

In lieu of flowers, donations are preferred to the American Heart Association – Southern Arizona Chapter, Wings on Words Child Language Clinic, or Youth on Their Own. 

Services will be held on October 11 at 1:00 pm at Catalina United Methodist Church, 2700 E. Speedway Blvd., Tucson.