Funeral services will be held Tuesday, April 6, for Dr. Leo McGee, 79, professor emeritus and former associate vice president for academic affairs at Tennessee Tech University. His family will receive friends from 10 a.m. until the service at noon at the Cookeville First United Methodist Church.
Dr. McGee is survived by his wife of 56 years, Dr. Gloria Foreman McGee, who also taught at TTU; daughters, Dr. Cassandra McGee Stuart and husband Phillip Stuart of Knoxville, and Dr. Jennifer McGee Shuler and husband Matthew Phillip Shuler of New Orleans, LA; granddaughter, Jordan Erica Johnson of Nashville. Full obituary information is here.
Cassandra McGee was a television journalist at WBIR-TV and is now manager of the ORNL Small Business Programs Office. She also served on the Knox County Election Commission.
Dr. Leo McGee played football and earned a bachelor’s degree from Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Ark. He earned a master’s and doctorate in education from Ohio State University. He joined the faculty at Tennessee Tech in 1977, becoming the first African American hired as an administrator at the university. He gained fame as Cookeville’s “hydrangea man” and was featured nationally as gardener with more than 400 individual hydrangea plants in some 50 varieties.