James Morrison

Winter Haven High School

Class of 1956

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James Morrison - Class of 1956 - Winter Haven High School

First Name	James
Last Name	Morrison
Graduation Year	Class of 1956
Gender	Male
City	N/A
State/Province	NC
Country	United States
Occupation	Professor
Married	Yes
Favorite School Memory	I remember with great fondness waiting out front of the school before classes started with Jim Hughes, George Nielson, and Yo Yo Kirkpatrick. I can still hear the bell ringing for the start and change of classes. And I loved that old building, which fit to a “T” the way I thought that a high school building should look. I remember with less fondness football practice in the Florida heat, where the coaches were convinced that drinking water during practice would harm us. Fortunately, no one had heat stroke, but I do remember that the saliva in my mouth would turn to small cotton balls. The only exception to this policy was once when Coach WR (Brick) Ausley (as the News Chief referred to him) was dismayed at one of our practice sessions and said something to the effect that we had better bring our supper to the next day’s practice, because it was going to be a long one. Lo and behold, Jere Griffen brought a sandwich to practice the next day. We more sophisticated types snickered, but Jere had the last laugh. Around the middle of practice, Coach Ausley blew his whistle and said, “Everyone who brought their supper can now go over to [the area where the water faucet was], eat their sandwich, and drink all the water they want.” My most poignant memory though, was of an incident that precipitated a life-long friendship with Lucy DuCharme, a friendship that was instrumental in my life. In Lucy’s 10th grade world history class, I told her that the authors of our textbook, who had devoted only two paragraphs to Napoleon, were wrong; that Napoleon had much more influence on history than they attributed to him. Like the good teacher she was, Lucy told me to prepare a report to the class justifying my argument, an assignment that I enthusiastically attacked. When Lucy started the WHHS hour on WSIR (30 minutes on Saturday mornings), she asked me to be a reporter, and, when the 1954 supreme court decision was announced, she asked me to accompany her to Jewitt high school (perhaps because she needed someone to carry the suitcase-sized tape recorder) where she interviewed the principal, a teacher, and a couple of students on their take of the implications of the decision, interviews that were included in the next WHHS Hour broadcast. Many years later, at one of Lucy’s Christmas parties, I told this story to an administrator in the Polk County School Board office, who replied, “Yes, I remember that; we held a special meeting of the school board to decide whether or not we should fire Lucy.” Fortunately for the kids in Polk County, and particularly for me, they didn’t fire her. Lucy knew that my father, an eighth grade dropout, died when I was seven, that my mother, who had not graduated from high school, supported us on a secretary's salary, and that I had no chance of going to college without scholarship aid. She encouraged me to apply for a state teaching scholarship (which required completing a competitive four-hour exam in Bartow) and for a Southern Scholarship Foundation scholarship at Florida State, which required a personal interview in Tallahassee. I really did not think that I was capable of getting a high enough score on a test to get a teaching scholarship and I absolutely had no idea how to get from Winter Haven to Tallahassee for an interview. I finally applied to take the exam in Bartow to get Lucy off my back (she asked me just about every time I saw her if I had applied to take the test). And she found out that Chester Mann was driving to Tallahassee for a science fair, asked him if I could go along, and, of course, Chester graciously invited me. Without Lucy’s active persistence in getting me off the mark, I would not have sought or received the scholarship aid, which covered my expenses for an undergraduate degree, which, in turn...(read more)
About Me	I enrolled at Florida State after graduation from high school, received a BS in social studies education (Lucy DuCharme’s influence) in 1960 and a MS in social science in 1961. I was working on a doctorate in higher education when I was called to active duty in the Army. I served in Germany from 62-64, separated from service in Heidelberg, began teaching sociology in the University of Maryland European program at night and went to school at the University of Heidelberg during the day. I moved to Munich in November 1964, continued to teach for Maryland, and became a graduate assistant in the sociology department at the University of Munich. This was during the days when language competency was a requirement for the PhD, and I thought that this was a good way to meet that requirement. And it was a great experience! I returned to FSU in 1965 and received my doctorate with a concentration in the sociology of higher education in 1969. After graduation, I accepted an assistant professorship in education and sociology at Penn State, and stayed there until moving to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in ’73 as a professor of educational leadership. I became professor emeritus in December, 2001. My professional vitae is at http://horizon.unc.edu/bios/info.asp?id=1&type=horizon I am currently living in Durham, NC with my spouse, Sherry. We married in 1973, the product of an old story: she was a student in one of my Penn State classes. One night (after the semester in which she was a student in my class), I met her at a college bar in State College and by the end of the evening, was in love. We don’t have children, but we have an absolutely great English Cocker Spaniel, Joie, who has her own Web site at http://winfreeenglishcockers.com/Joie.htm After retirement, I continued to edit and publish an e-journal I had founded (The Technology Source, http://technologysource.org ) until the November/December 2003 issue, when the journal was archived. I am currently editing a new e-journal, Innovate (http://www.innovateonline.info ). Sherry, who took early retirement from UNC Chapel Hill (she was assistant to the vice-chancellor for student affairs), is my partner in this ...(read more)