Posted on 11/28/2008 2:48:38 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Throughout Rear Adm. George “Steve” Morrison's naval career, officers and their wives used to gather in his family's living room for songfests that lasted well into the night. Sometimes the three Morrison children watched from the top of the stairs.
“He would sit down at the piano and play” near his wife, the vivacious Clara, said their daughter, Anne Chewning of Thousand Oaks. “They had a lot of fun, and they met a lot of interesting people.”
A collage of photos in Rear Adm. Morrison's Coronado home shows the admiral – who died Nov. 17 of natural causes at age 89 – posing with Queen Elizabeth, with comedian Bob Hope, with singer-actress Ann-Margret.
There's also a photo of his eldest son, Jim, who became a musical icon in the 1960s with his acid-rock group The Doors – partly by rebelling against his conservative father.
“Mom and Dad were proud of Jim,” Chewning said, but they also were confused and pained by his career path, drug use and death in Paris at age 27. “I don't think Daddy ever understood the impact Jim had on music.”
Rear Adm. Morrison was born Jan. 7, 1919, in rural Georgia as the son of a railroad worker. He grew up in Leesburg, Fla., and worked hard to enter the U.S. Naval Academy, perhaps with help from a relative who was an admiral.
“It was the only way he could afford to go,” said his son Andy Morrison of Pahoa, Hawaii.
Rear Adm. Morrison went to Pearl Harbor to serve aboard the mine-layer Pruitt shortly after his graduation in February 1941. There he met his future wife, Clara Clarke, who had followed her sister from their native Wisconsin.
Aboard his ship, Rear Adm. Morrison witnessed the Japanese attack of Dec. 7, 1941, from across the harbor. He married Clara soon after and was sent to Florida for flight training in spring 1943.
Rear Adm. Morrison flew combat missions during the last year of World War II and again during the Korean War.
During his lengthy career, he worked on secret nuclear projects at Los Alamos, N.M., served as operations officer aboard the aircraft carrier Midway and commanded the fleet of ships in the Tonkin Gulf incident that led to the escalation of the war in Vietnam.
He took command of the carrier Bon Homme Richard on Nov. 22, 1963. His first act as skipper was to announce the assassination of President Kennedy.
After earning flag rank at age 47, Rear Adm. Morrison weathered his son's very public rebellion, stardom and death while serving in high-profile Navy posts in the Pentagon and the Pacific. He never mentioned Jim publicly, but he found it strange to visit friends' homes and see posters of his son on the bedroom walls of their teenage children.
“He never told people (in the Navy),” Andy Morrison said. “But the young guys all knew.”
Rear Adm. Morrison told family that his most rewarding tour was his last – commanding U.S. forces in the South Pacific from his headquarters in Guam. He was beloved by the people of Guam, said Bruce Nichols of Poway, a longtime friend who served as his staff aide from 1974 to 1975.
Rear Adm. Morrison dealt with a flood of at least 140,000 South Vietnamese refugees who swamped the island after the fall of Saigon in April 1975. He created a tent city on an abandoned airfield to accommodate them while they waited to find new homes in the United States.
Later that year, Rear Adm. and Mrs. Morrison retired to Chula Vista. He avoided the usual Navy reunion groups, but played golf up to five times a week. He also took classes in Italian and ancient Greek, the latter so he could read the Bible as it was originally written.
The Morrisons traveled often, including a 1990 trip to Jim's grave in Paris. Rear Adm. Morrison installed a plaque he had crafted with an ambiguously worded Greek phrase that Chewning said meant “true to his own genius.”
The Morrisons moved to Coronado about six years ago.
Close friend Earle Callahan said Rear Adm. Morrison declined in health after his wife died in 2005, though he still rode his bike around the island and hosted what he called “Steve's Happy Hour” at his home on H Street.
“We'd sit around and carry on about the old times,” Callahan said.
Nichols said his son Brandon revered Rear Adm. Morrison and was inspired to attend the Naval Academy because of him. He said Brandon had looked forward to coming home and telling his mentor that he been selected to become a naval aviator after his graduation next spring.
Instead, Brandon flew home to attend Rear Adm. Morrison's private memorial service, which was held Wednesday at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery.
RIP
RIP.
An American patriot. It’s a shame that his son was such a selfish, misguided idiot. Fair winds and following seas, Admiral.
Wow, what a life!! I’d wanted to know about Admiral Morrison, I should have looked him up on the web a long time ago..... I remember hearing that Jim Morrison’s father was an Admiral but I didn’t know anything else.
R.I.P., Admiral Morrison.
btw, I don’t really believe in psychic phenomena but by some astonishing coincidence I was listening to a CD of “The Doors” music this morning for the first time in MANY YEARS and thinking about Jim Morrison’s life, even wondering about his family, friends, etc. and where they are now, who might still be alive etc. Now that feels like an eerie coincidence!
I didn’t know Jim’s dad died. RIP.
i loved the doors
and the contradictory
military father who hadn’t a clue.
This man had a genuine career of service which we all honor. As to the son, although I was never a fan of the music he did or the person he was, he died too young to see what he might have become. Often these people realize later the lessons their parents were living out for them and change as they come to appreciate them more. I’m glad that I’m not what I was at age 27 and that I’ve come to a better understanding of my own Dad’s nearly as long career of military service. Often the sons of career officers are much more rebellious and have a harder time getting past it. I was talking to a buddy of mine last night about that very thing. His Dad was an Air Force officer. We both said we’d grown up thinking that if we weren’t in the military, we weren’t “good enough”.
BUMP!
My father was a career Naval Officer and I understand the shadow cast by their service and sacrifice. It took a few years in service for me to slightly understand the sacrifice. I did not really understand until about my 10th year of Naval service when I got married and had children.
I have seen the dynamic from both perspectives. I was rebellious, but the Lizard King took it to a degree that is hard to grasp. He shamed his father and his name. He was not a man to look up to or idolize. He was a boy for his whole life. Peter frickin’ Pan on acid.
Yes, you’re absolutely right. He was a “boy” for his whole life, but that life was so short (because of his own foolish choices) that no one can ever know what some years may have brought. I’m not defending him by any stretch. I never even liked him or his music as far as that goes. As I said, the whole thing went directly to a conversation I’d had just last night. Two struggling Music Row songwriters opening up about how each of us had reacted/responded to our respective younger lives. Each one’s different experiences with the military and the efforts to “prove ourselves” to our Dads.
You’re right: the years would have brought a semblance of maturity or, as in the case of the average lib/socialist/marxist, lifelong immaturity and angry jealousy at the responsible, independent Americans.
If for no other reason, maybe I like to think that his Dad lived in that sort of peace of imagining that his son’s maturity would have brought him back to seeing the good he had been raised with and come back to it. A man deserves that.
That would be H Avenue, in Coronado CA.
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