McGee's early life and family are deliberately left undeveloped; among the few explicit mentions of family are a memory of attending a Chicago parade with his father as a boy, and a brother with whom he planned to go into business after his military service. The brother was apparently swindled out of his savings in a scam involving a woman and a male accomplice and committed suicide; it is strongly hinted that Travis subsequently killed the woman and her partner. McGee's ethnicity is Irish-American; his father's first name is never given, but his mother's maiden name is given as Mary Catherine Devlin.