‘Favorite Foodie’ Stacy Fawcett, sons remembered in Plano memorial service

Scott Fawcett, brother of slain “Favorite Foodie” Stacy Fawcett, began his remarks at a memorial for Fawcett and her two teenage sons Tuesday by saying that people had been asking how many funerals there were going to be for the trio.

“While that is a legitimate question, it truly never even occurred to us to have two or three funerals,” Scott Fawcett said. “We’re having one funeral, obviously. These three would want to go to heaven together.”

The closeness among Stacy Fawcett, her 19-year-old son, McCann Utu Jr., and her 17-year-old son, Josiah, was a recurring theme about the service, which drew a large crowd of family, friends, and Plano West High School students wearing football jerseys in the teens’ honor to Prestonwood Baptist Church.

The Rev. Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood, noted the size of the crowd, which filled roughly two-thirds of the large sanctuary.

The service was four days after Fawcett and her sons died. Early Friday morning, Plano police were notified that a “male subject” had reported that he committed murder. Officers found Stacy Fawcett and Josiah Utu dead at the scene, and McCann Utu Jr. with stab wounds that he died from later.

A family member told WFAA/Channel 8 that McCann Utu Jr. had called 911 while repeatedly stabbing himself. According to the family, the teen had never been the same since suffering a traumatic brain injury more than a year ago.

“For every parent who has a child in any sport, I ask that you think about how can we make change, how can we protect our precious children who love sports but suffer these terrible head injuries,” McCann Utu Sr., the boys’ father and Fawcett’s ex-husband, said at the service. “Because my son paid the ultimate sacrifice.”

“But while here on Earth,” Utu continued, struggling to get through his brief remarks, “my son lived, my son loved and my son laughed. And I know that he would want each of us to be the same.”

Stacy Fawcett was recalled in the memorial program as a force to be reckoned with (the program included an anecdote about Fawcett, an accomplished figure skater, skating with Olympian Dorothy Hamill at the grand opening of the Dallas Galleria).

Fawcett’s mother, Lynn Croft, spoke of Fawcett’s force of personality.

“You’d just kind of get in and put your seat belt on, because there was so much love,” Croft said. “I never met a more determined person in my life to take care of her children. She did not ever meet a stranger. She loved people.”

Fawcett who appeared weekly on the Saturday-morning edition of Channel 8’s News 8 Daybreak during “Favorite Foodie” segments, was well-known in the local media and food communities. She also blogged about food for radio station KVIL/103.7 FM’s website, and was an advocate for anti-hunger causes such as the North Texas Food Bank.

“That segment that she did on Saturday mornings was the highlight of her week,” Croft said. “She looked forward to that every week. She would start to ask me about what to fix on Wednesday, she would go over it, and two minutes later: ‘I changed my mind! I was going to do such-and-such, but I might do such-and-such on top of it.’ ‘Sounds good.’ Minutes later: ‘You know what? I think such-and-such might even be better!’ ”

Like all the speakers, Croft appeared to be trying to make sense of the tragedy. But she wanted it made clear that McCann Utu Jr. loved his mother.

“Mental illness is not something that we all understand,” Croft said. “Stacy was always the kind of person who thinks that she can fix things. Whether she’s fixing something to eat or just fixing things. She was bound and determined to fix this. And she, and I, did the best that we could.”

This story was originally published April 12, 2016 at 8:21 PM with the headline "‘Favorite Foodie’ Stacy Fawcett, sons remembered in Plano memorial service."