Robert J. 'Corky' Corcoran, devoted Mummer

Robert J. "Corky" Corcoran, 71, formerly of Southwest Philadelphia, a truck driver, court tipstaff, politician, and lifelong Mummer, died of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis Saturday, Jan. 22, at daughter Karen O'Brien's home in Mount Laurel.

At a Mummers Parade in the early 1930s, Katherine Lennon snatched an earring from John Corcoran, who was playing a banjo in a string band dressed as a gypsy. The couple eventually married and produced eight children, including Robert, who would become a Mummer like his father.

As a child, Mr. Corcoran marched with the Comics before he was old enough to play the banjo.

A member of the Mummers String Band Hall of Fame, he played in the Woodland, Avalon, Pennsport, and South Philadelphia String Bands over the years. He was past president of the Woodland String Band and held offices in two other bands.

In the late 1990s, he served as president of the String Band Association and was vocal about ways to improve the parade. He told the Philadelphia Daily News in 1999 that he hated having the parade on Market Street in 1995, when construction on Broad Street forced a detour, and he resisted efforts to change the route permanently.

In 2008, Mr. Corcoran was drill master for the newly formed Pennsport String Band and marched in the band with his grandson Justin O'Brien. That year, the Daily News reported that Pennsport "did what too many bands don't do: It played music while it marched."

"We play every block where there are people," Mr. Corcoran told the reporter. "If more bands did that there might be more fans. It's like those bands are saving themselves for the six performance areas before the City Hall judges."

This year, though ill and in a wheelchair, Mr. Corcoran watched his son, his son-in-law, and two grandsons march in Mummers string bands on New Year's Day.

In civilian life, Mr. Corcoran attended West Philadelphia Catholic High School and was briefly a bundle boy delivering material to sewers at the Quartermaster Corps in Philadelphia.

For 26 years, he was a member of Teamsters Local 463, making store deliveries for Penn Brook Milk Co. and later driving a tractor-trailer to supermarkets for Abbott's Dairy.

From 1987 until retiring in 2005, Mr. Corcoran was a tipstaff at Philadelphia Municipal Court.

Active in Republican politics, he ran unsuccessfully for state representative in the 185th District in 1984 and 1986.

From 1972 to 1982, Mr. Corcoran helped coach the St. Irenaeus School football team in Southwest Philadelphia. A proud Irishman, he was a member of the Philadelphia Emerald Society and the Ancient Order of Hibernians.

Old string band songs filled the home where he and his wife, Dolores Sowers Corcoran, raised four children, their daughter said. The songs also echoed from the patio of the couple's beach house in the Villas, N.J., and poured from Mr. Corcoran's banjo at parties.

"Even when he was confined to bed and tethered to an oxygen tank, he was singing 'Charlie on the MTA' as his string band buddies followed on banjos," O'Brien said.

Mr. Corcoran's wife of 39 years died in 1997. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by sons Robert Jr. and John; a daughter, Kellie Walters; four sisters; a brother; and nine grandchildren.

Friends may call from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, Jan. 28, and from 8:30 a.m. followed by a Funeral Mass at 10 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 29, at Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, Third and Reed Streets, Philadelphia. Burial will be in SS. Peter and Paul Cemetery, Marple Township.