Marilyn Jean Hall Morgan

Survived by her devoted husband of 57 years George Remsen Morgan, cherished son Scott Remsen Morgan and grandsons Matthew Remsen Morgan and Benjamin Baker Morgan, and daughter-in-law Vicky Ellis Morgan. Marilyn graduated cum laude from Beaver Country Day School in Brookline MA in 1963 and attended Rollins College in Winter Park Florida before graduating from Boston University in 1967 earning a BA in Music. Marilyn pursued a singular and innovative career as a nursing home administrator and activities director using her considerable talents in music, art, theater, and dance developing and implementing programs for seniors that enabled seniors to continue to make a difference in the lives of others. She had a lifetime appreciation for the welfare of both pets and wildlife.

Funeral arrangements will be provided by Druckett - J.S. Waterman Funeral Home 656 Boston Post Rd., Sudbury MA 01776 with viewing hours on Friday, March 15, 2024 from 4PM to 7PM. Internment will be in the Highland Cemetery in Dover MA at 11 AM Saturday March 16, 2024. In lieu of flowers donations may be made to the ASPCA and the World Wildlife Fund.

https://www.youtube.com/@GeorgeMorgan-yh9pk

Eulogy read on March 16th, 2024 at Marilyn's graveside

I first met Marilyn in early February 1964 when I was a junior at Rollins College and she was a freshman. I was the college sailing instructor and on the weekends ran the boathouse on the lake where Rollins is located in Winter Park, Florida. She had, she said, some sailing experience from sailing with her father on his 27 foot sailboat to and from Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. I sent her off on to the lake on one of the Sunfish sailboats we used in class. From the main dock I had about a 95% view of the lake itself, but on checking 10 minutes later, I did not see Marilyn or the sailboat on the water. There was one obstructed view by the boathouse garage where we docked the motorboats and so I quickly went there. Marilyn had the Sunfish bow against the shore with the sail fluttering. I hopped off the deck into the waist-deep February water and turned the boat back out onto the lake and climbed aboard.

We sailed together for about half an hour when I asked her if she would like to go to the Valentine dance two weeks hence, and she said yes. The rest is history. Neither of us could imagine then that we would be together for the next 60 years in which we checked all the boxes, “To have and to hold, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part”,

We were in love; her love I discovered early on had a special character into which I rapidly grew. Special because, as we courted and then married, it was a love, and an ongoing appreciation for what made us the individuals we were, that could not be compromised by our differences. I had not had that experience in my own family life up to that time, but she grew up with it, having a close relationship with both her parents and her grandparents, who she will be joining here. Her parents did not part until her father passed away just over 50-years together and her grandparents parted only when her grandmother passed away some 65 years after they first met.

Their life lesson in this respect became our own life lesson together. Growing up with her grandparents living just next door she developed quite early in life an enduring love and respect for older people that when pursuing a career brought her to the Senior Care profession as a nursing home administrator and activities director. She saw, early in her career, that for all the amenities and apparent security senior care facilities offered, there was yet one area she knew was often vital to seniors left unmet. That area was the opportunity for those in Senior Care to continue to make a positive and constructive difference in the lives of others. That this was so came from the goal of senior care facility owners to turn a profit from their residents, where residents become a means to an end, not ends in themselves.

This distinction, Marilyn saw, was often seen in the manner in which facilities sought to motivate their staffing to basically do more with less to increase profit for the owners. There were many Marilyn stories that illustrated how she met this challenge, but one that I particularly remember occurred during the holiday season at the end of the year. She was directed to create three teams to venture out one evening in the Boston Back Bay on a scavenger hunt. The members of the winning team would each receive $100. Marilyn fashioned two teams of staff of about equal number and rank. Team three consisted only of Marilyn. At the appointed hour the teams dispersed into the night and Marilyn finished an hour ahead of the rest. Marilyn collected her $100 to the astonishment and possibly annoyance of the owners.

The two losing teams were, at least, also astonished. As Marilyn explained to her staff, there is a difference in winning for the company and winning for the residents. The staff was well aware of, and generally supportive of, the unique and innovative programming that Marilyn created and implemented that gave residents a reason to rejoin life and make a difference for others. In doing so, residents found themselves once again making a difference in their own lives.

Directing her staff to focus on residents as ends in themselves, created a winning environment not only for the residents but also a win for the staff helping to provide that environment. “When you go home at night,” Marilyn asked, “do you feel just tired earning a pay check from the company, or do you come home with a sense of satisfaction that you helped make life better for the residents?” I win by giving the residents the win and that’s really how you actually earn your paycheck”

Teamwork Marilyn’s way was always tougher than the owner’s way, but Marilyn never wavered in her special focus. This lesson I learned from assisting Marilyn both officially and unofficially throughout her career in Senior Care. We both worked to make a positive and constructive difference in our own marriage for as long as we were together. At our parting, the lesson still stands for me as key against aging too quickly.

Marilyn, from the time she was very young, loved animals. Her fur brother was the family dog, a Spitz Poodle named “Rocky”. In the mid-50s or so the family was joined by two cats, a male, “Heyboy” and a female “Niffy”. All had quite distinct personalities. Although the cats lived with her parents in Dover not far from the apartment in Newton that was our first home together in 1966, Marilyn still missed them. We had generally agreed between us that sharing our quarters with a pet, or pets, might not be practical in the space available. Marilyn was commuting to Boston University in the fall of 1966 to complete her senior year in college. I was commuting also, taking graduate courses at Tufts University in 1966.

I arrived back at the apartment one day in early January 1967 to find Marilyn sitting at the top of the stairs in front of our apartment door. Alongside her sat a male orange tabby cat. “He followed me all the way back from the T stop” she said. “What could I do?” More to the point, ‘what could we do? “Give him a place for the night and we’ll see if he can find his way back from wherever he came from tomorrow” I answered. As it happened, “Charlie” remained with us, some 19 years, until his passing in the spring of 1985. Charle was a character in his own right and that day marked the beginning of the love I came to share with Marilyn for pets and wildlife. We moved to Dover two years later and six months into our new life there we were adopted by a second cat, a young and very matted Persian longhair who had chewed her way through the string around her neck that had been keeping her somewhere else. A few months of dedicated hair grooming restored her to her original beautiful self and “Samantha” became Charlie’s lifelong companion.

Sometime after our 20th anniversary Marilyn began lobbying me to get a St. Bernard dog. I resisted for a while but for our 25th in August 1991 I said “ok, lets celebrate with a St. Bernard”. Shortly afterward Marilyn returned with a 13-pound cuddly furball, “Snowbear” who by the end of the year had grown to 99 lbs and only levelled off at about 150 lbs the following year. I was indeed to fall for dogs as I had for cats. We are now on dog #5 (“Rocky 2” ) and cats #8 & 9 (“Sunshine” & “Twilight”)

All have enriched our lives and imparted to me, in particular, a much keener appreciation for both pets and wildlife than I would have had were it not for Marilyn.

A love that could not be compromised by our differences; the satisfying experience of being able to each make a positive and constructive difference in our own lives as well as in the lives of others; and for the many opportunities we have had to share our lives in such meaningful ways with our fur family; These are the gifts Marilyn has given me and that give me the courage to go forward. She will no longer be here for me to have and to hold, but she will be here with me in spirit.

Thank you, my love, for all these good years, I will love you forever.