Deceased July 22, 1995
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In Memory
Geoffrey Morrison died after a long illness at his parents’ home in Harwich, Mass., on July 22, 1995, at the age of 47. Geoffrey loved Amherst College where he had earned both his B.A. in music and his M.A. in history. He received his Ph.D. in American history from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1983. During a brief remission in his final months of life, he enjoyed attending both the 25th Reunion of the Class of 1970 as well as gathering of the Amherst Alumni on Cape Cod.
I met Geoffrey Morrison when we were students at Amherst College and sustained an intermittent friendship over the next 25 years. When he became ill, he asked me to speak at his funeral. In part, I said: “When I met Geoffrey Morrison, I was immediately drawn to his intellect, his wit, his quiet charm, his easy sense of hospitality, his diverse circle of friends and his zeal for American history. For most of a year we were college roommates. It was during that period that I began to grasp the complexity of Geoffrey. I came to see him as one perhaps untimely born. He really was not a creature of the 1960s but somehow belonged to another age. Sometimes his enthusiasm for reading Latin and Greek texts would lead me to imagine him in the Age of Homer or Cicero. Sometimes the diversity of his interests would lead me to conclude that he was really the last surviving Renaissance man, but not someone cut out for the second half of the 20th century. Sometimes I would puzzle over the strange combination of youthfulness and age which seemed to dwell in Geoffrey. Was he really a remnant of the Enlightenment? Or a displaced person from the Romantic era? Or even a survivor from the Victorian period? Or was it that his passions or his fantasies or his charm simply lifted him out of this world—out of this plane of existence—into some other space that I could not quite grasp or comprehend—into a place which ultimately frustrated both his loving and living to their fullest potential.”
Geoffrey’s professional life was marked by significant successes and profound disappointments. He taught history at a number of private schools and many colleagues and former students remember him with appreciation and respect. He was also a classical pianist and taught advanced piano for more than 20 years. He was a figure skater and co-founder and former director of the Amherst Figure Skating Club. He devoted great effort as the founder of the ultimately ill-fated Meiklejohn School in Amherst, as well as to the Mentor After School and Summer Programs for Gifted Students in Amherst from 1987 to 1992.
He is survived by his father Wendell Morrison, his twin brother W. Gregory Morrison and his sister Marlena “Wendy” Marino.
The Rev. William A. Doubleday ’72