Special Forces A-Team at Tong Le Chon, South Vietnam, on the Cambodian border, 1970.  McCann is wearing glasses.

In the mid-1960s, Michael McCann was a history major on voice scholarship at Fairfield University.  After graduation (BA History; MA Communications Arts), he enlisted in the Army in 1968, became a paratrooper and Green Beret sergeant and was wounded while serving as a combat medic on a Special Forces A-team in Vietnam.  He received the Purple Heart and Bronze Star for Valor.

After leaving the Army in 1971 with a 10% disability, he taught Social Sciences at Sacred Heart University where he first used music as a teaching tool.  He joined SNET in New Haven in 1972.  In the early 1990s he studied voice with Jerold Sienna at Yale University. 
 

After retiring from SNET in 1996 as director of public relations, Mike mixed his early experiences of music, history and war into an album of Soldiers' Songs - 13 songs from 8 wars, including World Wars I & II, Vietnam and the American and Irish civil wars.  To supplement the album's historical content, he established this web site.  He has performed various programs of Soldiers’ Songs in schools, assisted living and senior centers, clubs & pubs and for veteran's groups and historical societies.

Grand Marshall/Grandson New Haven St. Patrick's Day Parade Grand Marshall, Mike McCann, holds his grandson, Connor James McGuire, who led the parade with him in 1999.

Michael McCann was born in Bridgeport, CT in 1945, the second oldest of eight (8) children.  His father, Donald McCann, was an organist and choir master at St. James Church in Stratford for 35 years and retired as a music teacher from Fairfield Woods School, Fairfield, CT.  Active in Boy Scouting in his youth, Mike is an Eagle Scout.  He sings tenor in the parish choir of St. Mary’s Church in New Haven. 

He and his wife Jeannine of 36 years host a bed & breakfast on Whitney Avenue in New Haven near Yale called the Touch of Ireland Guest House.  They have two children and two grandchildren.  Mike is a member of the Special Forces Association, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Greater New Haven Irish American Community Center.  He was the Grand Marshal of the 1999 New Haven St. Patrick’s Day Parade.