Roy Alexander Morris

Roy Alexander Morris

Written by his daughter, Ruth Louise Morris Blimes.

Helen, Remus, Edith, Pearl, Nell, Clarence, Roy, Carl & Addie

Roy was the first boy and the fifth child of Remus Clark Morris and Addie Frances Bradds.  He lived on a farm with his parents and sisters and had very little formal schooling.  I think he went to the third grade, yet he went to various correspondence schools while he was employed at the Southern Ohio Electric Co. He also loved working crossword puzzles, so he was not lacking in brains.            

Roy Alexander Morris

                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
He  was a handy man who could do plumbing and rebuilt part of the house at 510 High St., Nelsonville, Ohio and could wire a house from scratch.  He and Mom raised a huge garden every year and she kept his nose to the grindstone.  I think he would have liked to take life a little easier, but times were hard and money was scarce.  I don't ever remember a time when we didn't have plenty to eat and nice clothes to wear, even if they were homemade.                                      

Roy as a child

                                                                                                                                   
   I have always thought it was a blessing to be in a small town during the depression.  We raised our own chickens and turkeys, raised vegetables and had fruit trees, had our own bees and except for meat we were pretty self sufficient.  His sister, Pearl, lived on a farm and Dad would help on the farm in exchange for part of a pig and a beef.                      

Marquise & Roy Morris

                                                                                                                                                                  
 I am glad that Dad lived to a ripe old age and had time to go to his "fall-out shelter" up back and snooze on his glider as much as he wanted to.  He had earned it.
He liked to read Western books and had quite a collection of Louis L’Amour paperbacks which he read over and over.  I used to wonder how he could do that, but as I get older I forget the light fiction I read and in a year or two I am ready to read my favorites again.  He loved to hunt and fish.  He didn't hunt much in his later years but never lost his interest in fishing.
I don't think he cared if he caught anything; he just liked the peace and quiet that came with being in a picturesque setting.  I can remember when he brought squirrels or rabbits home and cleaned them up back.  I used to watch him and still remember how bad they smelled.  That may have something to do with my not liking to eat them.  But the real reason was biting into a piece of buckshot.  Ugh!  He lived to be almost 82, dying from liver cancer.    

Roy & Marquise with their grandchildren

                                               

    

To his mom’s words Bill would like to add the following comments.

When I was fifteen I went to live with my grandparents.  I was not a very good student in school and I didn’t get along with my dad.  Grandma and Grandpa offered to take me in to help me with my studies and to bring peace in my parents’ home.  So for my Junior and Senior years in high school I lived with them in Nelsonville, Ohio.  Grandpa loved to take me fishing with him and we also did a lot of gardening in the yard and at a garden spot they rented along the Hocking River above Nelsonville.  I remember one time we were digging potatoes and I would lay my shovel down on the ground when I picked up the potatoes I had uncovered.  Grandpa said he could sure tell I was a “city kid” because a “farm boy” would stick his shovel in the ground upright so he wouldn’t have to bend over to pick it up.  I took this to heart and many years later I would tell my horticulture students this story when they would lay their shovels flat on the ground.

Roy & Marquise

Whenever we were working and Grandpa would do something like pounding his thumb with a hammer, his form of swearing was to say very emphatically, “God bless our Sunday School Teacher”!                                                                

Carl, Edith, Clarence Roy, Sam, Pearl, Addie, Remus & Helen Morris

  Shortly after I graduated Grandpa took me aside and told me that because I had lived with them off and on through my youth, he felt I was like another son but since I wasn’t if there was anything I wanted from him, like any of his belongings or some money, I should ask for it while he was still living because he felt it was only right to leave his estate to his children.  He did help me with some money when I started college at Ohio University and again when I was starting my greenhouse business in Licking County, Ohio after I was married.