Donald Dale McKusker passed away peacefully on Tuesday, the 4th of August 2015, at the age of 89.
A first generation Texan, born on Texas Independence Day in the small East Texas town of Doucette on the 2nd of March 1926, and raised in Port Arthur. He was a graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School in Port Arthur in the class of 1944, and was a WWII Navy Veteran in the Asiatic Pacific Theater on the islands of Rota, Guam, Saipan and Iwo Jima (1944-46). He then went on to attend the University of Houston from where he graduated in 1950. He was the recipient of the very first Outstanding Alumni Volunteer Award.  He was also a Member of the Texas Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, and a 50-year volunteer of the Boy Scouts of America.
He retired as an insurance executive with TransAmerica and part-time train engineer at Astroworld. His passion for football was matched by few as he followed the sport and his favorite teams, Houston Texans and University of Houston Cougars. He mostly cherished spending time with his family and friends.
He is pre-deceased by his parents, Clarence James and Mamie Hollingsworth McKusker; brothers, Carl, Dewey and Willie; sister, Falba; daughter, Katherine McKusker Fox; and grandsons, Robert B. Level and Dennis W. Andersen. Those left to cherish his memory are his sons, John McKusker and his wife Joyce of Warrenton, Virginia, Donald Dale McKusker, II and his wife Michelle of Tomball, James McKusker and his wife Kelley of Bealeton, Virginia; and by his daughters, Christine Laake, Anne Frosch and her husband Ron, Ramona McKusker and her husband David Masera,  and Mamie Crum, all of Houston; 22 grandchildren; 28 great-grandchildren; and 2 great-great-grandchildren; numerous nieces, nephews and friends, and the mother of his children Jacqueline Quick Roberts.
A memorial service celebrating his life is to be conducted at ten o’clock in the morning on Thursday, the 13th of August, in the Jasek Chapel of Geo. H. Lewis & Sons, 1010 Bering Drive in Houston, where Rev. Kim M. Poer, Pastor of Care Ministries at St. Peter’s United Methodist Church, is to officiate.
Following the memorial service, interment with military honors will be held at 1:15pm, at Houston National Cemetery, 10410 Veterans Memorial Drive in Houston.