We went to Ray Morgan's memorial service. Lawrence people who read the Kansas City Star or Times knew the name of Ray Morgan. Ray was my friend from l954, Ray and his wonderful wife, Mary Grace, and those five children, all of whom were students in journalism and all of whom were in my classes.
Every year since 1954 we have known that a Christmas card would arrive from the Morgans: the parents, the children, then the grandchildren. The Morgans are a remarkable family, and it was always a joy to be with them.
I met Ray in '54 when I went to Kansas City and interviewed for a summer job on the Kansas City Times. When the interview was over, Ray was asked to give me a tour of the newspaper and tell me about the place. He was already covering the Kansas political scene. We became friends, and I worked on the Times many summers in the '50s and '60s. I believe that the first visit to the Morgan home came one night after work when the Morgans had Star/Times people there for a party in the back yard.
Ray Morgan became the Kansas correspondent of the Star (you know, of course, that the Times was the morning Star back then). I think Ray knew, and knew well, every important Kansas politician in his time. I saw some of them at a reception that followed the service. Ray was a Republican, of course, like so many who know that being a Republican is almost obligatory in Kansas.
His service was at the Colonial Church on Mission Road. I'm pretty sure that we were there for some Morgan weddings, and I know that Ray had me come over once to give a talk there. After the talk we went to the Morgan home in Shawnee for Sunday dinner. I'm not being insulting when I say it was a little like "You Can't Take It with You." The Morgans loved each other, and enjoyed each other. The Morgans were the most completely natural family I have ever known.
We got to the memorial service in time to see Mother and the children, and their sprouses (as Jimmy Durante used to put it). The children had talked the night before and remembered that they had all been my students.
Most of the Morgan kids became lawyers. I needled Mary Grace, telling her that Russell Baker once advocated America trading lawyers to Japan for Toyotas. I think maybe I wrote letters of recommendation for some of the Morgans to become lawyers. Reluctantly.
We saw the Morgans often in Lawrence. They seemed to be good KU people. Ray might show up for Editors' Day, and he knew many of the editors who were in the Newspaper Editors' Hall of Fame. He also came to William Allen White Day, for he was a trustee of the White Foundation. The Morgans didn't make it in February, and the Christmas card we had received told us why. Ray didn't look at all well on that picture. We could usually count on talking with the Morgans: the school, politics or newspapers.
Ray Morgan was part of a great tradition of Star people. At the memorial service we saw Bill Baker and Cruise Palmer, and at the reception we saw Tom Eblen. I got to wondering about Alvin McCoy, who, I believe, was Ray's predecessor in Kansas. He's probably long gone.
Three of the grandchildren got up and talked about Grandpa. Then Scott, who is on the Lawrence school board, spoke for the family. We hadn't known about many of the things we heard, that Ray loved camping, that buffaloes once invaded their campground, that Ray loved circuses and fireworks. We shouldn't have been surprised when, at the end of the service, the family exploded some fireworks (not big ones) and exited to the tune of a lively march.
Are you supposed to "enjoy" funerals? I rather enjoyed that one, the service, the minister, the music, the words from the family, hearing the bagpipe. And hearing that Ray was a newspaperman. I've gone to funerals for newspaper people and heard no mention of the contribution they had made in the world. And I knew Ray was a newspaperman, and in my summers on the Times I read a lot of his copy.
That service was really a joyous occasion, despite the fact that someone had died. But I think funerals should be about life more than death, and we were so glad that we had the time before the service to see the family and talk about Ray and what he had meant in our lives.
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