Lauren Theresa McCann

Lauren Theresa McCann, 64, of Ooltewah, TN, passed away peacefully at home on July 15, 2025, surrounded by family after bravely battling metastatic breast cancer for four years.

The daughter of Kenneth and JoAnne Scheub, Lauren was born on October 15, 1960, in Gary, Indiana. 

She was raised in the northern Indiana area until her family moved to Phoenix, Arizona when she was 12 years old.   She was a graduate of Shadow Mountain High School in Phoenix where she developed several life-long friendships.

Shortly after graduating from high school Lauren began what would become her lifelong career and life’s calling: caring for patients in nursing homes.  Lauren started her career as a certified nursing assistant (CNA) working at a nursing home in Arizona. She quickly realized that she enjoyed caring for the sick and elderly. Others saw her natural empathetic and caring nature and, over time, she assumed several increasingly important nursing home roles. Encouraged by others, Lauren took and passed the Arizona State Nursing Home Administrators exam and accepted her first position as a nursing home administrator.  During her career, Lauren would manage several nursing homes in both Arizona and Tennessee – most recently serving as the administrator of Life Care Center of Collegedale.

Lauren’s intelligence, strong work ethic and exceptional people skills ultimately led to her holding several senior management positions for a number of large nursing home companies such as Kindred Healthcare where she served as a VP of operations, responsible for 18 nursing homes in the Southeast and their thousands of patients and employees.

Lauren met her husband, Peter McCann, in 1997 while still living in Phoenix.  After a two-year, long-distance relationship, she married Peter and moved with her two young children, Sarah and Alex, to the Chattanooga area, joining Peter and his two young children, Peter and Lindsay. 

Family was incredibly important to Lauren.  She cherished being a mom and raised her children with great love while simultaneously instilling in them the importance of being productive members of society.  In recent years, nothing brought a bigger smile to her face than spending time with her granddaughter Julia and seeing her three grandsons, Samuel, Eli and Shepherd, playing in the house.

She also took her role as a loving, caring daughter to aging parents very seriously.  She relished spending quality time with her parents, Ken and JoAnne Scheub, who lived with her and Peter in their Ooltewah home for many years.  In the last four years of her life, despite being sick with cancer, Lauren spent many hours each week working with her dad in the downstairs garage restoring old furniture and donating their beautifully finished work to local charities.

Friends were also deeply important to Lauren.  She forged many close, much-valued friendships with folks from high school, the churches she belonged to, the communities she lived in and with those from her four decades of working in nursing homes.

And when not spending time with family and friends, Lauren could be found during these last several years spending special time with her horse “Honey”, who brought her great joy.

Preceding Lauren in death was her mother, JoAnne (Judy) Scheub, of Ooltewah, who died in 2019.

Survivors include her husband of 26 years, Peter; her father, Kenneth Scheub of Ooltewah; her brother Kenneth Richard Scheub of Phoenix and brother and sister-in-law Bruce Scheub (Shauna) of Phoenix; her daughter and son-in-law Sarah Kunzel (Peter) of Orlando; son and son-in-law Alex Gandara-Morgan (Scott) of Dallas; daughter and son-in-law Lindsay Scott (Stewart) of Knoxville and son Peter Michael McCann of Durham, NC, and her four grandchildren.

You are invited to attend her Memorial Service which will be held at Ooltewah United Methodist Church’s Worship Center (6131 Relocation Way, Ooltewah) at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday July 22 with Pastor Micah Nicolaus officiating.  There will be a brief gathering with the family in the back of the Worship Center after the service.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions can be made to the American Cancer Society.

Visit the online obituary www.heritagechattanooga.com to post tributes and share memories.

Arrangements are by Heritage Funeral Home, East Brainerd Chapel.