MICHAEL VALENTINE GANNON

GANNON, MICHAEL VALENTINE
Michael Valentine Gannon passed to eternal rest at his home on April 11, 2017, in Gainesville, Florida. He was born on April 28, 1927 in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the eldest son of 1st Lieutenant Michael Vincent Gannon and Mary Lee Ayers Gannon. He attended Blessed Sacrament Elementary School in Chevy Chase, Maryland. His high school years were spent at St. Joseph Academy and WFOY radio station in St. Augustine, Florida.
Professor Gannon received graduate degrees from Catholic University in Washington, D.C., The Université de Louvain in Belgium, and the University of Florida. He was a pioneer in the academic study of Florida's Spanish colonial history, authoring six books and more than 50 scholarly articles including Rebel Bishop (1964, reprinted 1997), The Cross in the Sand (1965, reprinted 1999), Florida: A Short History (1993), The New History of Florida (1996), to which he contributed and edited, and which was revised as The History of Florida (2013), and The History of Florida in 40 Minutes (2007).
He also made important contributions to the history of World War II, publishing Black May (1998) and Operation Drumbeat (1990) (both reprinted by the U.S. Naval Institute) and Pearl Harbor Betrayed (2001). His creative works include Secret Missions (1994) a historical novel set in Florida during World War II and his play My Friend Zelma: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings On Trial, which has been produced in DeLand, Florida and in St. Augustine.
He was ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood in 1959, and served as pastor at the St. Augustine Catholic Student Center in Gainesville, and as Director of Mission Nombre de Dios in St. Augustine from 1962-1967. As a Catholic priest and a teacher, Father Gannon was challenged by his students about the morality of the Vietnam War. To learn more, he chose to go to Vietnam as a war correspondent in 1968 for the National Catholic News Service. He returned with a conviction that the war was a terrible misadventure and in some ways corrupt.
Professor Gannon was always deeply committed to social justice, ethics, and civil rights. He served as a critical bridge of cooperation and communication during St. Augustine's racial conflicts of 1965 and the anti-Vietnam War student protests and unrest between 1970 and 1972. He was a calming force for the University community following the attacks of 9/11.
He resigned from the priesthood in 1976, continuing his career as an Associate Dean and Professor of History at the University of Florida. In 1992, he was named Distinguished Service Professor of History.
Gannon maintained close personal connections with scholars and documentary repositories in Spain, and was instrumental in forging institutional ties between Spanish historians and the University of Florida. His research and collaborative efforts were recognized by the government of Spain in 1974 when he was awarded the Knight Cross of the Order of Isabel la Católica, and again in 1990 when he was awarded Knight Commander of the Order of Isabel la Católica, the highest academic award of that country. Through his efforts, some of the most important collections of Florida-related documents, until then in private Spanish family libraries, were copied and brought to Florida, greatly expanding the available resources for understanding Florida's colonial history.
It was his passion that Floridians know about their State. To that end, he not only influenced more than 15,000 students through his courses in Florida history, but he gave hundreds of talks to government, leadership, history, literary, school and community groups throughout Florida. Through his leadership roles and lectures during Florida's 400th and 450th anniversaries, the American Bicentennial and the 1992 Columbian Quincentennary, Professor Gannon also brought Florida history to a broader national and international audience.
The University of Florida honored Professor Gannon with the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Teacher of the Year award in 1978, the Florida National Alumni Association's first Distinguished Alumni Professorship in 1979, and the University Medallion in 2016. Among his many other honors and awards are the City of Gainesville's Citizen of the Year award (1972) and his selection by The Gainesville Sun as one of the '50 Most Notable Figures' of the 20th century in Northeast Florida (2000). In 2007 he received the City of St. Augustine' s highest decoration, the Order of La Florida, and was designated as a Florida Literary Legend by the Florida Heritage Book Festival in 2009. He was named as a 'Florida Icon' by Florida Trend Magazine (2010), and in the same year was the recipient of Florida's first Florida Literary Lifetime Achievement Award and Leadership Florida's LeRoy Collins Lifetime Achievement Award for leadership.
Professor Gannon is survived by his wife, Genevieve Haugen and seven nieces and nephews.
A funeral Mass will be celebrated on Saturday, May 6, at 11:00 A.M. at St. Augustine's Church in Gainesville with a reception following in the Catholic Student Center. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to the Michael Gannon Endowment in care of George A. Smathers Libraries, Development Office, P.O. Box 117000, Gainesville, FL 32611-7000. The endowment will support an annual lecture in Professor Gannon's honor.