Part 1: Cadet and Merchant Mariner

Van Horne Morris, my maternal grandfather, was born in 1919 and grew up in Melrose, Massachusetts, a suburb located about 7 miles north of Boston. He entered Massachusetts Maritime Academy (then called the Massachusetts Nautical School) on September 19, 1936, graduating on on September 27, 1938.

As a cadet on the training ship Nantucket he visited San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Ponta Delgada, Azores in 1937. Morris's relatively short list of cadet infractions at Mass Maritime included "sleeping in without authority" and "taking coffee from cadet officers pot."

As a merchant mariner, Morris traveled through ports in Singapore, Malaysia, and India, among others. After five years at sea, he expressed a desire to give up his maritime career. As he wrote in an intensely personal and poetic letter home, he longed to “sleep in a bed that doesn’t roll, to hear the wind rustling through the trees.”  

After leaving the Merchant Marine (circa 1940) Morris enrolled in the Naval Aviation Cadet program, completing advanced flight training in Florida. In early 1942 he married his high school sweetheart, Marion “Betty” Gilmore, who was a member of the American Ballet Theater in New York. As shown in the photo and described in the local paper, Ensign Morris wore the dress uniform of the Navy Air Service, while Betty wore a navy blue dress with anchor buttons. 

After completing the Naval Aviation Cadet program, Morris was assigned to the USS Hornet (CV-8), an aircraft carrier which saw significant action during its single year of service, from October 1941 through October 1942. He and Betty (who he affectionally nicknamed “Butch”) were stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, where the Hornet was docked prior to her departure for the war zones. In April they drove to California, where, according to a family photo album, “Van left San Francisco for Pearl Harbor on the morning of May 8.” 

The Hornet entered Pearl Harbor on May 26, 1942, but left two days later to take part in the Battle of Midway. Presumably, Morris had joined the ship prior to its departure. This photo shows him on the Hornet on October 4, 1942, just a couple of weeks before the ship sank during the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands on October 26, 1942. According to a story passed down to my mother, he was later listed as "missing" though he had already made it home safely. 

After World War II, Van and Betty settled in Hingham, Massachusetts, where Van embarked on a career as a commercial airline pilot. He and Betty had three children: Peter in 1944, Patricia (my mother) in 1949, and Gene in 1952. Sadly, he died in a car accident in 1958 at the young age of 39.