Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Alfred Winslow MORSE
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - May 9, 2008
Deceased Name: Alfred W. Morse, 89, librarian at Temple
Alfred W. Morse, 89, of Kennett Square, a librarian at Temple University for 24 years, an advocate of world peace with Quaker organizations, and an expert in Romance languages, died of congestive heart failure April 19 at Kendal at Longwood, a retirement home where he had lived for 11 years.
Mr. Morse was born in Amherst, Mass. His mother died when he was a baby, and he was raised by his Victorian-era grandmother, who emphasized literature and education. Mr. Morse earned a bachelor's degree in French in 1940 from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and a master's degree in Romance languages in 1941 from Brown University.
That same year, he married Dorothea Cloud, a Quaker he had met in a French class at Middlebury College. "My parents courted in French," son Steven said.
When World War II broke out, the Army drafted Mr. Morse and shipped him to Hawaii. He was a plainclothes intelligence officer, monitoring Hawaiians of Japanese ancestry and suspected subversives in the armed forces.
"It was there that my father's interests in human rights blossomed," his son said.
After the atomic bombs were dropped, Mr. Morse was sent to Japan for seven weeks before being discharged in 1945.
He earned a master's degree in library science in 1950 at the Drexel Institute of Technology. He worked at the Library of Congress for four years before moving to Kennett Square.
He was a librarian for a couple of years at the Free Library of Philadelphia on Vine Street before cataloging the library of Pierre S. du Pont at Longwood Gardens.
Temple hired Mr. Morse as a cataloguer at its library in 1957. Writing short reviews of books and categorizing them under the Dewey decimal system satisfied his intellectual curiosity until he retired in 1981.
Starting in the late 1950s, Mr. Morse joined Quaker groups opposing atomic weapons. He and his wife, who was clerk of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, traveled to Central America in the 1980s with the Friends World Committee for Consultation. The volunteers spread Quakerism throughout the Americas.
In 1986, Mr. Morse traveled with a Quaker delegation to the Soviet Union to promote the Conference on Disarmament. He was a curiosity in Moscow when he and a friend rode a unicycle on the streets.
Mr. Morse was a stamp collector, played tennis and enjoyed hiking. He swam until his health began to fail in November.
He continued to study foreign languages at West Chester University. Mr. Morse spoke French and read Spanish, Italian, German and Russian.
In addition to his wife and son, he is survived by sons David and Robert and four granddaughters.
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. June 21 in the auditorium at Kendal on Route 1.
Memorial donations may be made to the Friends World Committee for Consultation, Section of the Americas, 1506 Race St., Philadelphia 19102.
Contact staff writer Gayle Ronan Sims at 215-854-4185 or gsims@@phillynews.com.
Copyright (c) 2008 The Philadelphia Inquirer
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