Mac Delano Homan

Mac Delano Homan [macho man] was born July 5th, 1933 in Peabody, Kansas. His parents were Oscar A. Homan and Elizabeth McPheeters Homan. He moved with his parents to Olathe, KS in early 1942 where he attended public school and graduated from Olathe High School. He was Senior Class President and was active in all sports. He played five years on the Olathe American Legion baseball team as catcher.

In the fall of 1951, Mac enrolled at Emporia State Teachers College, playing guard and linebacker on the varsity football team. He graduated in 1955 with a B.S. in Biology. In his freshman year he met his future wife, Lila Miller of Eureka, KS. They were married three weeks after graduating from Emporia State. They moved to the Wichita area and took up teaching. Mac was declared unfit for armed service due to his "bumps and bruises" from his football activities. In 1957 Mac and Lila moved to Tucson, AZ where he had been accepted as a teaching fellow and graduate student in the Botany department of the University of Arizona. Mac's research resulted in his thesis entitled "The Physiological Effects of Gibberellins on a Genetic Strain of Dwarf Corn."

Mac and Lila returned to Kansas for two years and had their firstborn, Susann, in 1960 before heading to the University of Oregon where Mac studied Advanced Placement in Biology. In 1962, they moved to Concord, CA where Mac taught and was Science Chair for 33 years. Their second, Marc, was born in 1963.

Mac's daughter Susann is a professional stage director and somatic educator. She has a Ph.D. in Theatre and is currently living in Omaha, NE. Mac's son Marc became a Navy helicopter pilot retiring as a Commander in 2010 after three tours of duty in Iraq. He lives in Coronado, CA.

During the summers of 1968 and 1969 Mac was a member of the BSCS textbook writing team at the University of Colorado. From 1971-1973, Mac received an International Teaching Fellowship so he and the family resided in Victoria, Australia. During the following years, Mac taught in all the various areas of science, helping set up the Mt. Diablo District Marine Science program, directing the school yearbook, and turning around his school's basketball program from a longtime losing tradition to winning the league title. He was also active as a local umpire and was proud to have umpired over half of the Cy Young-winning, Hall-of-Fame pitcher Randy Johnson's high school baseball games. Mac retired from Concord High School in 1995 after forty years of teaching and coaching.

Mac and Lila moved from California to Carson City, NV in 1996 where Mac focused on volunteering at the Carson City library for 11 years. It was at this time that Mac and Lila began their longtime interest in Elderhostels (now called Road Scholars), ultimately attending over 80 programs varying from observing polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba; hiking Big Bend National Park; birding in Costa Rica; watching spring training in Florida and Arizona; cruising the islands off the New England coast. And every imaginable beautiful and wild place in between.

In 2007, Mac and Lila moved to Sun City - Mesquite, NV where Mac set up the Sun City rec center library and was honored as the volunteer of the year in 2011. Mac was active in bridge, both as a player and teacher. In 2014 Mac and Lila moved to the Fairwinds Desert Point retirement community in Oro Valley, AZ.