Marvin Richard Tawwater was delivered to the world on March 4, 1940, and left us on September 8, 2017. He was preceded in death by his mother Nadine Williams and his father Orbin Marvin “Smiles” Tawwater; his brothers Don Tawwater and Kenneth Lee Tawwater. He leaves three adoring daughters, Kimberly Marie Warfield, Andrea Dawn Tawwater and Nicole Lynn Rogers, as well as seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. His most recent years with us included copious amount of golf watching, fantasy football, a dedicated love and commitment to his two cats – Noche and Pearl, and a never ending desire for all things sweet and/or greasy.
In his younger days, he was an avid bowler, golfer, blackjack player, and car aficionado. He loved southern food and Texas colloquialisms; if he were here now, he would no doubt tell us that he was “busier than a one-armed paper hanger in a wind storm.” Richard proudly served his country as a member of the US ARMY 82nd Airborne and 101st Airborne. Stationed in Germany between Korea and Vietnam, he often told his daughters of the first jump, one in which the young army recruit who jumped before him died when his parachute didn’t open. This didn’t deter Richard as he would make more than 100 jumps during his Army service. When he returned from the service, he would meet and marry Alice Maria Muskcopf. The union produced three children, but ultimately ended in divorce and Richard never remarried. As a young father, he shared many of his passions and loved to take his daughters for drives in a series of classic Corvettes and Camaros that he owned. He was just as good at conveying to his girls things he didn’t like, including popping your fingers, sitting too close to the TV, and running over the electrical cord while vacuuming.
He was a skilled engineer who worked many jobs in manufacturing and production. Laid off in middle-age after two decades with Associated Springs in Dallas, he would spend the next twenty years moving from job to job - saving troubled manufacturing plants with his acute managerial skills. During this time, his work took him to various locations in Texas, Louisiana, California, and ultimately Vera Cruz, Mexico, where he spent his last years managing an American pipe fitting plant before retirement. He could be stubbornly comfortable in seeing life as he needed it to be, this was maybe most evident in his long-awaited return to the U.S. from Mexico without the ability to understand more than a handful of Spanish words after living 5 years in a Spanish speaking country. He was quite simply ours and we found him delightful, moderately easy to love, and always willing to listen. He could empathize with the bad, celebrate the good without prompting or recognition and his daughters' well-being meant a great deal to him. He will be greatly missed and can never be replaced and for that, we are all sad as we say – goodbye sweet daddy.
The family asks that you play a really good game of golf, enjoy a football game (and root for the Cowboys!) with your friends, or do something kind for another person in lieu of flowers. The family welcomes you to join us for a graveside service that will take place on Friday, September 15, 2017, at Zion Cemetery in Frisco, Texas, beginning at 10:30 AM.