Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Nicholas Waln MORRIS
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - April 13, 1991
Deceased Name: NICHOLAS W. MORRIS, 76, AVIATOR, RENOVATOR, SALES EXECUTIVE, SAILOR
Nicholas Waln Morris was a direct descendant of the Robert Morris who signed the Declaration of Independence, but he was not much impressed with such antecedents.
He was too busy giving flying lessons, selling steel, raising his family, socializing with old buddies in the Corsairs motorcycle club and renovating and adding onto an 1812 farmhouse in Chester Springs.
Besides, according to his son, Nicholas W. Morris Jr., his father felt "it was more important who wanted to be descended from you than who you were descended from."
Mr. Morris, 76, died unexpectedly Wednesday at Chester County Hospital after an asthma attack at his home in West Chester. He had been a longtime resident of Chester Springs.
He was raised at Dundale, a farm where many of the Morris clan lived and which is now part of the Villanova University campus. His schooling ended when he left Episcopal Academy in 1934, about three months before graduating.
Having a gift for mechanical things, he turned early to machines. He took up flying when he was 16. Along with his friend Shipley Newlin and seven buddies, he formed the Corsairs Club. "We did a little hill climbing and riding around," Newlin recalled.
He left school to go into business. With Charles A. Devaney and some money borrowed from his mother, he bought some land on Moorhall Road about three miles north of Paoli and founded the old Paoli-Main Line Airport.
There, he sold airplanes and gave flying lessons. He and Devaney were also partners in DeMoss Aeronautical Corp., which turned out precision parts for airplanes.
One of the people he taught to fly, said his son, was astronaut Charles ''Pete" Conrad, commander of the Apollo 12 moon mission in 1969.
Conrad came out to the airport and offered to cut the grass in return for being allowed to sit in the planes to eat his lunch, Morris said. "They were impressed with him and gave him (flying) lessons," he said.
Conrad was a talented pilot, but he was also "a little more aggressive than Dad felt comfortable with," Morris said, and he sent him elsewhere to complete his training.
According to family and friends, Mr. Morris was a shy and unpretentious man with a shock of silver wavy hair and an irresistible smile. His life so centered on family and friends that he was rarely - if ever - away from home overnight.
After selling the airport about 1950, he went to work for Morris Wheeler Steel Co. in Philadelphia, the family firm, as the Southeastern Pennsylvania sales representative so he could stay close to home. He rejected administrative jobs because, "he had so much fun on the road meeting people," his son said.
In 1954, he bought a tiny stone house about the size of a trinity on the Conestoga Pike in Chester Springs, now Route 401, crammed the family into it and set about renovating and building onto it.
"He tore down all the old buildings and built an addition onto the house. It was a project we all were involved in all the time," Morris said. "It kept the family together.
"He would put in 16 to 20 hours each weekend and everyone would come and help him," he said. "Then the men would go home and get their wives and they would all come back for dinner and dancing."
Though he rarely flew after selling the airport, Mr. Morris never lost his interest in planes. At his death, he was rebuilding an ultra-light aircraft that had been wrecked. "He was going to fly it once and then sell it," his son said.
When Morris and his wife, Margaret, were in their 60s, their son, David, became fatally ill with a tumor of the spinal cord. He was a big man, 6-foot- 7, and to care for him, Mr. Morris built a special room overlooking the farm and the pond, Nicholas Morris said.
"They took care of him for the last six months of his life," he said. ''It was a true labor of love."
Mr. Morris was a member of the Egg Harbor Yacht Club , and a member and former vestryman at St. Peter's Church in the Great Valley, Paoli.
Besides his son Nicholas, he is survived by his wife, Margaret Pancoast Morris; another son, Anthony; a daughter, Priscilla Wellford; three sisters, and 11 grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. today at St. Peter's Church in the Great Valley, Church Road, Paoli. Burial will be private.
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