Published in the Austin American-Statesman on Monday…

Dan ToomeyDan R. Toomey
Dec. 16, 1911 — April 17, 2005

Dan R. Toomey, who died Sunday in Austin at age 93, led a colorful life and leaves as his legacy a grove of pecan trees he helped plant off Barton Springs Road. A jack-of-all-trades, Dan was a machinist, truck driver, shrimp boat captain, dam builder, farmer and newspaper photographer. In World War II, he was a gunnery instructor in the Army Air Corps and recalled that his main task was training recruits to "shoot behind their planes and not in front of them."


Dan was born December 16, 1911, in San Antonio to Lillian Clifton and Robert Pasha Toomey.  After his mother’s death in 1922, the family moved to Austin, where his father purchased land along Barton Springs Road.  He and his younger brother, Jack, planted rows of grafted pecan trees that their father hoped would become a thriving business. The business never materialized, but the trees flourished and continue to provide a canopy at Shady Grove RV Park, Mimosa Café and Austin Java.

As a boy, Dan explored the woods near Barton Springs and fished in Barton Creek.  He and his brother once had to swim for their lives in a Colorado River flood before the Highland Lakes dams were built. He and his brother also had to live in a chicken coop for weeks after they accidentally burned down their house while their father was working out of the country during the Depression. Dan attended The University of Texas for three years, then moved to Corpus Christi and rebuilt engines for the oil industry.  He later joined his father in the construction of Austin’s Tom Miller Dam in the late 1930s. Dan was a machinist and his father was a construction inspector.

Dan returned to Corpus Christi and worked as a civilian at the naval base before being drafted into the Army in 1941.  After the war, Dan drove a dairy truck and operated a shrimp boat for several years in Corpus Christi before becoming a truck driver for United Van Lines.  During a trip to Arkansas, he bought 700 acres in Huntsville and became a cattle and hog farmer for 15 years before selling the farm and taking up photography. He worked at the Madison County Record photographing ball games, weddings and crime scenes. 

He retired in West Fork, Arkansas, took up golf, and kept busy with stamp, coin and record collecting, gardening, photography and his computer. He moved back to Austin in 2000 and lived beneath the pecan trees at the Shady Grove RV Park, where he planted and tended 300 rose bushes. When Dan was no longer able to live alone a few months ago, volunteers from the Austin Rose Society transported his roses to the Zilker Garden Center. 

Dan’s brother, Major John Marshall Toomey, was killed in action in 1942.  The same year, Dan married Ann Birdwell, who died in Arkansas.  His father, Robert, died in 1968. His longtime companion Ruth Van Deusen died in 1999.

He is survived by niece Susan Toomey Frost; grandniece Edith Frost of Chicago; and grandniece Lucie Webb and her husband Mark Webb, and their three sons Thomas, Marshall and Clark, all of San Antonio. The family is grateful for years of help given to Dan by Bennie Bell and the other residents of the RV park, and the staff at Barton Hills Assisted Living on Kinney Avenue, not far from Dan’s boyhood home.

A second grove of pecan trees will be planted off Barton Springs Road in memory of Robert, Jack and Dan Toomey.  The trees will shade a picnic grove along Bouldin Creek in the long awaited Town Lake Park.