Eric B. Morrison, 79, passed away peacefully on June 19th in his wife Shelley’s arms. He was born in 1940 in New York City to Samuel and Hazel Morrison. He graduated from Riverdale Country School in the Bronx and then moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where he lived the rest of his life. Eric and his parents moved from Manhattan to Wilmington, because his father became the manager of Arthur’s Apparel Shop, a highly regarded women’s clothing store owned by the Morrison Group on Market Street. Eric’s mother was a very well dressed lady, so Eric’s flair for fashion was genetically acquired!
He attended Cornell University, and he was a graduate of the University of Delaware (Theta Chi) and Georgetown Law. He enjoyed a long career at Wilmington Trust, where he worked in equity research. Eschewing the typical garb of a banker, he wore colorful ties and braces and his hair in a ponytail, and he was partial to brightly colored convertibles. Eric was a “Coastie”, having served 6 years in the Coast Guard Reserves in the 1960’s, where he was assigned the perilous duty of taking the temperature of the ammunition magazine on the ship. He said the temperature never changed.
For 25 years he taught fitness classes at the Central YMCA, and that is where he and Shelley met 31 years ago when she wandered into his early morning aerobics class. He was dressed in black lace tights and a bright bandana and was screaming like a banshee. Her first impression of him was, “What the hell is this?”, an impression that was shared by scores of others when they first encountered him in a “guts”, step, aerobics, or spinning class.
He also taught at the Siegel Jewish Community Center for 15 years. He especially relished teaching his spinning classes. It was the perfect class for him. He could play his favorite rock n roll music and scream at (oops, I mean “motivate”) people, while having no need to choreograph the movement. You see, Eric had no inherent sense of rhythm. He had the audacity to lead aerobics classes simply because he loved doing it so much.
He especially loved the Rolling Stones from the moment they burst onto the scene in the mid-1960’s. It’s not that Eric wanted to BE Mick Jagger. Eric thought he WAS Mick Jagger. At some point he lost count of how many Rolling Stones concerts he had been to. One year, he and Shelley went to the Orange Bowl for a concert. When they got there, Shelley discovered their seats were in the front row. Eric never revealed how much he had paid for those tickets. He told Shelley many times that that info is written on a piece of paper in their safe deposit box, and that once he was gone, she could go look. Hmmm. Guess she’ll be heading to the bank soon………… His last Rolling Stones concert was a Christmas present from his son Burke’s family. It was held at the Linc last Fall. The whole family went, so Eric got to attend a Rolling Stones concert with his grandchildren. That was very special.
Just as he had relished his role as father to Burke, more than anything else, he relished and cherished being a grandfather — aka “Poohbah” – to his grandchildren, Max and Molly (aka “M&M”). He and Shelley actually moved specifically to have a child friendly home and yard, so that they could spend as much time with them as possible. When Molly came along 2 years after Max was born, and two child car seats were difficult to accommodate in Eric’s bright yellow truck, Shelley talked him into getting a minivan. His initial reaction was, “I’m not going to drive any damn minivan” (repeat that over and over). But once he realized how the minivan made it easier and better to have adventures with the grandkids, he embraced the experience.
Eric could often be found attending M&M’s athletic events, school plays and concerts. He tried to attend every one of them. One of his last true joys on this planet was viewing Max’s graduation from the Tatnall School on June 7.
Eric and Shelley were partners in adventure. While the adventure could be a trip to Tahiti or Alaska or Napa, they also considered a trip to the newly opened (at the time) Costco in Glen Mills to shop and get a hot dog to be an adventure. In the past 25 years they said to each other hundreds of times, “Are you ready for a new adventure?”
Countless of their adventures included Max and Molly. The adventures were big and small and always created a cherished memory. Some of the favorite big ones were trips to Niagara Falls (Can you say, “Eh”?), South Dakota (where they sat within a few feet of a buffalo herd), Smoky Mountains (land of Dolly Parton; rafting down the Pigeon River), and Vegas/Arizona (Sedona jeep tour, Grand Canyon). There were many trips to NYC for Broadway shows (especially during Christmas), climbing into the crown of the Statue of Liberty, canoeing down the Brandywine every summer when they would stop to have lunch and skip stones and look for crayfish. The minivan had a DVD player, which entertained M&M for years. They watched “The Simpson Movie” so many times that they can recite the entire movie from memory. (Bad grandparents.)
Eric and Shelley spent a lot of time in Arizona. They owned a second home there for almost 10 years and had Arizona Cardinals season seats for 20 years. They never moved there, because, well, their sons and the grandchildren live in Delaware.
Eric is survived by his loving wife of 22 years, by his son J. Burke (Kerrie), his grandson B. Max, his granddaughter Molly, all of Wilmington, Delaware, and his cousins Judy Block and Susie Mantell, both of New York. He is also survived by step-sons Shawn Lindsey and Kent Lindsey and by step-grandson Victor Lindsey.
Charitable contributions in memory of Eric may be made to either the Central YMCA, 501 W 11th St., Wilmington, DE 19801, or to the Siegel JCC, 101 Garden of Eden Rd., Wilmington, DE 19803.
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