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- Dr. John Morton
Dr. John W. Morton died as the result of a heart attack on Feb. 21, 2014, 10 days before his 89th birthday. A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, March 8, at the Anglican Church of the Holy Trinity, 1813 N. Alabama St., on the old St. Mary's Academy campus in Silver City. A celebration of Dr. Morton's life will immediately follow. His ashes will be buried in the Pinos Altos Cemetery at a later date. John West Morton Jr. was born to Gladys (Rhodes) and John West Morton on March 3, 1925, in Dallas. His childhood years were spent in Memphis, Tenn., where his strong intellectual, musical, and artistic gifts were recognized from an early age. Stricken with polio at 7, he missed a year of school but kept up with his class through home study and voracious reading. He began piano lessons as a young child, developing a lifelong love for the music of Bach and Purcell. His interest in the natural world manifested early, with pet snakes, turtles, and - for a time - a young alligator sharing the family home. A champion speller, he represented his elementary and junior high schools in regional spelling bees. The Mortons returned to Dallas as John entered high school. He graduated from Vickery-Hillcrest High School as valedictorian in 1943 and earned a B.S. in chemistry from Southern Methodist University in 1946. That year he was named a senior fellow to study under famed chemist Henry Gilman at Iowa State College in Ames. Gilman was notorious for keeping Ph.D. students at work on research projects far longer than the three years typically required - a practice immortalized in ""Gilmania,"" a slim volume of satirical poetry published anonymously in 1947. Written in an early English style with illustrations resembling medieval woodcuts, this underground classic was republished three times during Gilman's long tenure. John Morton's long-suspected authorship of ""Gilmania"" was finally made public in C. Eaborn's 1990 biographical memoir of Henry Gilman. He also published several scientific papers with Dr. Gilman and others during his six years of graduate study. John Morton met his future wife, Anita Kezer, at Iowa State, where she was a faculty member in the Child Development program. They were married Dec. 23, 1950. On receiving his Ph.D. in 1952, he became a research chemist for Proctor & Gamble at their lab in Cincinnati, Ohio. He began to miss the classroom, however, and made a life-changing decision to return to teaching. He served on the chemistry faculty of Louisiana Polytechnic Institute in Ruston from 1954 until 1962, when he was hired as associate professor of chemistry at New Mexico Western College (now WNMU). He eventually became full professor and head of the Physical Sciences department. Soon after arriving in Silver City with their two young daughters, the Mortons bought a corner lot on a hill overlooking the university. Dr. Morton began designing an octagonal house for the family and - with virtually no construction experience - built most of it himself over the next four years. In two decades of teaching at Western, Dr. Morton inspired many students to pursue careers in science. He brought innovative approaches to his chemistry lab, engaging students in soap making and experiments with early photographic processes. He continued his personal exploration of both the scientific and artistic sides of photography after retiring in 1982. A one-man show of his ambrotypes was featured at WNMU's McCray Gallery in 1984, and he was invited to speak at conferences on early photographic techniques. He began to focus on powder printing, an obsolete method for fusing photographic images onto ceramic. Over two decades of trial and error, he improved upon the original process and was eventually able to produce full-color photographs on tiles of his own manufacture. Dr. Morton volunteered for many years in the Silver City Museum darkroom, filling orders for prints from the photo archive and later helping to digitize historic images. He also became a skilled videographer and editor, assisting his close friend and colleague Paula Geisler with productions for Community Access Television of Silver and other clients. Dr. Morton's eclectic tastes, wide-ranging interests, and joy of learning expanded along with his encyclopedic knowledge over nearly nine decades. He studied Russian and Homeric Greek, but also kept up with technology and popular culture. He wrote music in the tradition of the Baroque composers he admired. He played piano, guitar, and recorder, and loved to sing. He brewed beer. He built a telescope from scratch, casting metal components in molds that he had made. He sold ""Dr. John's Lye Soap"" at the Silver City Food Co-op, in wrappers bearing his cartoon self-portrait. He tapped his vast memory for poetry on CATS-TV presentations. He concocted elaborate practical jokes and brilliant works of parody. He shared large ideas and obscure trivia with his daughters and grandsons as they grew up, opening their eyes to the world's possibilities. Despite a lifetime of rare achievement, he was a genuinely humble and unpretentious person. Dr. Morton is survived by his daughter, Susan Berry, and her husband, David; grandsons Miles Cook and his wife, Chinatsu, Gabe Morton-Cook and his wife, Laura, and Andrew Berry; great-grandchildren Mina and Noah Cook; and son-in-law Cy Shuster. He was preceded in death by his wife, Anita, and their daughter, Judith Morton Shuster. He maintained close friendships from every era of his life going back to elementary school, and although many of the older ones have passed on, he leaves a large number of friends, colleagues and former students worldwide who will sincerely mourn the loss of this true Renaissance man. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests that contributions be made in John Morton's memory to the Building Fund, Anglican Church of the Holy Trinity, PO Box 1233, Silver City, NM 88062, or to the New Mexico Coalition for Literacy, 3209-B Mercantile Ct., Santa Fe, NM 87507 (www.newmexicoliteracy.org).
Published in Las Cruces Sun-News on Mar. 4, 2014
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1925 - 2014 (88 years)
