WILLIAM

William, the baby of the family, born late in the lives of our parents, escaped much of the heartbreak of the Morrows in Hackensack. Father died before William reached his teens, and he missed the comfort and direction and companionship of his father during these critical years. William had a fantastic academic record in grammar school, reaching the eighth grade at the age of 12. He subsequently suffered a breakdown as a result. However, he did well in high school, and graduated at sixteen.

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, William, a sophomore at Rutgers, was among the early draftees called. He suffered through the rigors of the segregated army system in vogue at that time, but made it to Officer Candidate School at the end of his thirteen weeks of basic training. He won his commission and began the long, dangerous trek from the United States, landing in North Africa, and on to the bloody assaults at Anzio Beachhead and the Battle of the Bulge in Europe. He knew all the soul-shattering experiences of combat and the personal pain of seeing his men die, and at twenty-one he was a hard-bitten warrior of the miseries of war. Like his brother Eugene, more than twenty-five years before in World War I, William returned from World War II an uncertain and restless human. He had been through too much to return to the quiet and exacting demands of the campus. He had gone from boy to man in the
hectic, searing years of war, and he needed to remain in familiar surroundings to retain his equilibrium and new assurance. So he joined the regular Army. Today, retired from the Army after serving around the world, he is Coordinator of Patient Admissions at the Hackensack Hospital and lives in Teaneck, New Jersey,
with his wife and two gifted children.

Way Down South Up North
© 1973